Qantas has signed a multi-year partnership with Accenture to modernise its technology and redesign parts of its corporate functions, a move the airline says will affect about 850 roles over the coming years.
Cyber Daily, citing an internal memo seen by sister title Australian Aviation, reports the jobs are at the airline’s Mascot headquarters in Sydney.
What’s changing
According to Qantas’s statement, as reported by iTnews:
- Accenture will modernise the group’s back-end systems, processes and data.
- Some services will move to Accenture, delivered mostly by its teams in India and some in Australia, and later be reworked with automation and AI.
- Accenture will invest upfront to speed up modernisation of Qantas’s data platforms.
- The first wave of changes is expected by mid-2027.
The Australian Services Union says the first roles affected are in finance, procurement, people and marketing. Qantas says individual outcomes haven’t been decided and it will consult staff and unions first.
The technical debt problem
Qantas said it is dealing with decades of technical debt, including more than 1,000 legacy applications “never designed to work together”. Connecting the data across them is, it said, the next step to speed up its use of AI.
Chief executive Vanessa Hudson said the aim is to have “automation and AI built in from the start”. She said the decision was not a reflection on staff and the airline would focus on redeployment, reskilling and support.
Pushback
iTnews reports the union is demanding an explanation for offshoring roles despite earlier assurances. The Australian Financial Review first reported the Accenture talks in August, when up to 1,000 jobs were said to be in scope.
