AI Cloud Engineer

Key RequirementsYou must be an Australian Citizen — this is a federal government role and no visa holders (including PR) will be considered.You must be able to obtain and maintain a Baseline security clearance before commencing.5+ years hands-on AI/ML engineering experience across greenfield and brownfield environments on-premises, public cloud, and hybrid platforms — Kubernetes, MLOps, LLMs, IaC, the lot. The GigG'day, AI trailblazers! 👋Picture this: you're embedded inside one of Australia's largest federal agencies — and you're doing it by building next-generation AI platforms from the ground up. That's the gig. A Federal Agency is on the hunt for a sharp AI Cloud Engineer / Developer (APS6 equivalent) to join their Technology and Digital Program (TDP) Group on an initial contract of up to 12 months, with hybrid working across licensed office locations in VIC. This isn't a 'set and forget' role. You'll be designing, deploying, and operating AI/ML environments — greenfield and brownfield — across on-prem, public cloud, and hybrid platforms. Think Kubernetes, MLOps pipelines, LLMs, RAG architectures, IaC, DevSecOps, and FinOps all rolled into one meaty engagement. You'll collaborate with Data Scientists, Cyber Security, Architecture, and Core Data teams to build foundational platform capability that actually scales. You'll operate with a high degree of autonomy, drive innovation, influence outcomes across technical forums, and contribute directly to the agency's strategic direction. The first two weeks are fully onsite to get you up to speed, then you'll settle into a hybrid rhythm (minimum 2–3 days per week in the office). We know because we do — we've been contractors ourselves, and we know what separates a genuinely impactful AI engineer from someone just ticking boxes. This role rewards people who can translate complex technical concepts into plain English, build consensus with senior stakeholders, and deliver compliant, secure solutions in a highly regulated environment. If you tick the essentials below, we'll help you nail the pitch and get in front of the right people fast. Talk to us: 🏢 Cloud Delivered👤 Tristan Coleman👤 Dan Harrison👤 Ursan Sachdeva Essential CriteriaMethods 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.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.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.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.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.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.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.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 CriteriaApplication 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. Screening Questions YOU WILL BE ASKED:Seriously, don't bother if you don't think you'll pass these questions. Are you an Australian Citizen?(Expected answer: yes / no)What is the highest active or dormant security clearance you currently hold?(Expected answer: one of the listed options)Can you attend onsite in Melbourne?(Expected answer: yes / no)Do you live in Victoria or are you willing to relocate?(Expected answer: yes / no)Are you an Australian Citizen? (This is a federal government role — no visa holders including Permanent Residents will be considered.)(Expected answer: yes / no)Are you eligible to obtain and maintain a Baseline security clearance?(Expected answer: yes / no)How many years of total experience do you have working in federal government ICT environments?(Expected answer: a number)How many years of hands-on experience do you have 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?(Expected answer: a number)How many years of experience do you have with Kubernetes, including namespaces, RBAC, operators, CRDs, AI Pipelines/Kubeflow, model serving and distributed workloads?(Expected answer: a number)How many years of experience do you have with AI/ML engineering and MLOps, including model lifecycle management, training, inference, deployment, monitoring and automated model build-and-release processes?(Expected answer: a number)How many years of experience do you have with LLM and Generative AI tooling, including vLLM/TGI or equivalent, Hugging Face, Retrieval-Augmented Generation, vector databases and AI agents?(Expected answer: a number)How many years of experience do you have with DevOps, CI/CD and Infrastructure as Code, including Git, GitOps/Argo CD, Terraform and/or Ansible?(Expected answer: a number)How many years of experience do you have with security, governance and compliance in cloud environments, including DevSecOps, data sovereignty, security classifications and Australian Government regulatory requirements?(Expected answer: a number)How many years of experience do you have with cloud platforms and cloud AI services (AWS and/or Azure), including SageMaker or Azure AI/ML?(Expected answer: a number)On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your ability to articulate complex technical concepts clearly and facilitate stakeholder discussions to drive consensus on alignment with project and organisational goals?(Expected answer: a rating)How many years of experience do you have with application support, including using application management software and tools to collect performance statistics and carry out maintenance tasks?(Expected answer: a number)