AI Cloud Software Engineer

Application closing date: Monday, 12 October 2026 • 11:59pm, Canberra time

Estimated start date: Monday, 16 November 2026

Location of work: ACT

Working arrangements: Full-time onsite for the first 2 weeks. A hybrid WFH arrangement, usually a minimum of 2 days per week onsite, will be considered from the location of their capital city.

Length of contract: 12 months

Contract extensions: Up to a maximum of 24 months

Security clearance: Must have an active Baseline clearance

Rates: $100 - $120 per hour (inc. super)

Services Australia is at the frontline of government service delivery, supporting millions of Australians, and is front and centre of a vision to be a world leader in government service delivery. It's using cutting‑edge technology to build world class platforms and capabilities to help Australians get on with their lives.

Services Australia is seeking an AI Cloud Software Developer with demonstratable experience with AI on‑premises platforms to play a pivotal role in delivering complex application development projects on platforms across the Technology and Digital Program (TDP) Group that align with the agency's strategic objectives. The position requires a seasoned professional with extensive experience and expertise in AI Engineering capabilities, including AI workload migrations, deployment and operations.

As an AI Cloud Software Developer, the role will specialise in public cloud platform tooling, with the capability to design, implement, and optimise environments from new (greenfield) implementations as well as enhance existing setups (brownfield). This role is focused on applying secure‑by‑design architectures, incorporating reusable patterns and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to deliver scalable, compliant solutions in line with APS frameworks and regulations.

The role will require collaboration with Data Scientists, Architecture, Cyber Security, and Core data teams in the group to establish foundational platform capability and frameworks, enforce governance and apply best practices across networking and resource management in your primary platform. The successful candidate is expected to operate with a significant degree of independence with a high level of autonomy, while also maintaining close working relationships with key stakeholders and strict adherence to agency processes and procedures.

In performing the role, the candidate will be required to identify and drive innovation, manage and lead change, and has an active role in contributing to and implementing the agency's strategic direction with decision‑making and advice to others highly dependent on their own judgement. It is vital to ensure that Services Australia effectively leverages technology to enhance service delivery and meet the needs of the community. It is expected that they will develop, describe present and influence outcomes and/or findings across various forums and have excellent problem‑solving, communication and leadership skills in a collaborative environment.

Key duties and responsibilities

• create software and technical designs for the realisation of complex development solutions
• develop high‑quality code and long‑term maintenance of a product's code base
• provide technical advice on software development and maintenance
• provide go‑live support and maintenance for complex developments
• perform a range of analysis, design, software development, prototyping, unit testing and maintenance activities
• undertake analysis of technical requirements to support project evaluation with proposed solutions
• ensure compliance with endorsed software development methodologies
• identify, investigate, and resolve complex ICT issues
• assess, communicate, monitor, and control risk
• develop team plans and goals
• prepare draft reports and corporate documentation
• manage and prioritise own and others' workloads to meet business objectives in specified timeframes
• develop and deliver on projects within the assigned area of responsibility
• perform cost analysis activities as required
• act with integrity by promoting workplace practices aligned with the APS Values and the APS Code of Conduct
• exercise appropriate delegation in accordance with legislations and guidelines.

Technical skills required but not limited to

• 5+ years of hands‑on experience as an AI Engineer, including solution design, implementation and operation of greenfield and brownfield AI/ML environments across on‑premises, public cloud and hybrid platforms.
• Experience in Kubernetes including namespaces, RBAC, operators, CRDs, deployments, services, ingress/routes, secrets, config maps, workbenches, custom images, AI Pipelines/Kubeflow, model registry, model catalogue, model serving, distributed workloads and monitoring.
• Experience in containers and platform engineering, including Docker/Podman, container image creation, registries, image scanning, vulnerability management, container security and secure software supply chain practices.
• Experience in Linux administration, networking and storage, including DNS, TLS, proxies, load balancing, ingress, firewall concepts, certificates, scripting and connectivity between on‑premises and cloud environments.
• Experience in DevOps, CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code, including Git, GitLab/GitHub/Azure DevOps, Tekton, GitOps/Argo CD, Terraform and/or Ansible, and automated build, test and deployment pipelines.
• Experience in Python and scripting for automation, AI/ML integration, APIs, platform tooling and operational support.
• Experience in AI/ML engineering and MLOps, including model lifecycle management, training, inference, evaluation, registration, deployment, monitoring, model optimisation and automated model build‑and‑release processes.
• Experience in LLM and Generative AI tooling, including vLLM/TGI or equivalent, Hugging Face, LLM APIs, embeddings, Retrieval‑Augmented Generation, vector databases, prompt/evaluation tooling, AI agents and foundation models.
• Experience in APIs and enterprise integration, including REST APIs, authentication, OAuth/OIDC, API gateways, service‑to‑service integration, streaming platforms, data lakes and feature stores.
• Experience in cloud platforms and cloud AI services, including practical experience in at least one of AWS, or Azure, and preferably two, with exposure to SageMaker or Azure AI/ML.
• Experience in object storage and data management for pipelines, models and datasets.
• Experience in observability and operational monitoring, including AWS CloudWatch or Azure Application Insights, logs, metrics, tracing and model/application monitoring.
• Experience in security, governance and compliance, including RBAC, secrets, certificates, network policies, vulnerability scanning, DevSecOps, data sovereignty, security classifications, privacy obligations and Australian Government regulatory requirements.
• Experience applying FinOps practices, including cost transparency, usage optimisation and financial governance for cloud and AI workloads.
• Experience applying architecture principles and enterprise technologies to translate complex technical requirements into scalable, sustainable and supportable solutions.
• Proven ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly, facilitate stakeholder discussions and drive consensus on alignment with project and organisational goals.

Essential criteria

1. Methods and tools: Level 4 (SFIA)
   Provides advice and guidance to support the adoption of methods and tools and adherence to policies and standards. Tailors processes in line with agreed standards and evaluation of methods and tools. Reviews and improves usage and application of methods and tools.
2. Programming/software development: Level 4 (SFIA)
   Designs, codes, verifies, tests, documents, amends and refactors complex programs/scripts and integration software services. Contributes to the selection of the software development methods, tools and techniques. Applies agreed standards and tools to achieve well‑engineered outcomes. Participates in reviews of own work and leads reviews of colleagues' work.
3. Release and deployment: Level 4 (SFIA)
   Assesses and analyses release components for input to release scheduling. Maintains and administers tools and methods for software delivery, deployment and configuration. Maintains release processes and procedures.
4. Software configuration: Level 4 (SFIA)
   Designs, verifies, documents, amends and refactors complex software configurations for deployment. Contributes to the selection of the software configuration methods, tools and techniques. Applies agreed standards and tools, to achieve well‑engineered outcomes. Participates in reviews of own work and leads reviews of colleagues' work.
5. Software design: Level 3 (SFIA)
   Undertakes complete design of moderately complex software applications or components. Applies agreed standards, guidelines, patterns and tools. Assists as part of a team in the design of components of larger software systems. Specifies user and/or system interfaces. Creates multiple design views to address the different stakeholders' concerns and to handle functional and non‑functional requirements. Assists in the evaluation of options and trade‑offs. Collaborates in reviews of work with others as appropriate.
6. Systems design: Level 4 (SFIA)
   Designs system components using appropriate modelling techniques following agreed architectures, design standards, patterns and methodology. Identifies and evaluates alternative design options and trade‑offs. Creates multiple design views to address the concerns of the different stakeholders and to handle functional and non‑functional requirements. Models, simulates or prototypes the behaviour of proposed system components to enable approval by stakeholders. Produces detailed design specifications to form the basis for the construction of systems. Reviews, verifies and improves own designs against specifications.
7. Systems integration and build: Level 4 (SFIA)
   Provides technical expertise to enable the configuration of system components and equipment for systems testing. Collaborates with technical teams to develop and agree system integration plans and report on progress. Defines complex/new integration builds. Ensures that integration test environments are correctly configured. Designs, performs and reports results of tests of the integration build. Identifies and documents system integration components for recording in the configuration management system. Recommends and implements improvements to processes and tools.
8. Testing: Level 3 (SFIA)
   Designs test cases and test scripts under own direction, mapping back to pre‑determined criteria, recording and reporting test outcomes. Participates in requirement, design and specification reviews, and uses this information to design test plans and test conditions. Applies agreed standards to specify and perform manual and automated testing. Automates testing tasks and builds test coverage through existing or new infrastructure. Analyses and reports on test activities, results, issues and risks.

Desirable criteria

• Application support: Level 3 (SFIA)
  Follows agreed procedures to identify and resolve issues with applications. Uses application management software and tools to collect agreed performance statistics. Carries out agreed applications maintenance tasks.