The appointment means Vish Padmanabhan, who took on the role as CIO in April last year, is demoted to the role of deputy chief information officer.

Balfour will join Telstra in early April and will report to the telco's chief operations officer, Greg Winn.

Balfour, who is a 17-year veteran of the airline, replaced former IT chief David Burden as CIO in late 2001. She will remain working as Qantas CIO until March.

While at Qantas, Balfour has overseen sweeping reforms at the airline, including infrastructure modernization and a shift to outsourcing. In 2004 Qantas signed a deal worth more than A$1 billion (US$739 million) to outsource IT and data center services to IBM and Telstra.

Balfour was not available to comment on her appointment.