Application closing date: Monday, 03 August 2026 • 11:59pm, Canberra time (in Canberra)
Estimated start date: Thursday, 03 September 2026
Location of work: ACT
Working arrangements: The contractor will work from the specified office location (Canberra) for 2 weeks before WFH will be considered. Any WFH will require the contractor to work in the specified office location a minimum of 2 days per week.
Length of contract: 12 months
Contract extensions: Up to a maximum of 24 months
Security clearance: Must be able to obtain Baseline
Rates: $140 - $160 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 to procure Senior Solution Architects (experts) with demonstrable experience with AI platforms to play a pivotal role in delivering complex application development projects on public cloud 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 Public Cloud Services, including cloud-based AI workload migrations and deployment.
As a Senior Solution Architect, you will specialise in either AWS or Azure public cloud platforms, 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 building secure-by-design architectures, incorporating reusable patterns and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to deliver scalable, compliant cloud solutions in line with APS frameworks and regulations.
You will collaborate with Architecture, Cyber Security, and Core Infrastructure teams in the group to establish foundational cloud platform capability and frameworks, enforce governance, and apply best practices across networking and resource management in your primary platform, while demonstrating skills in both AWS and Azure.
The Senior Solution Architect 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. The Senior Solution Architect is vital in ensuring that Services Australia effectively leverages technology to enhance service delivery and meet the needs of the community.
Duties may include some or all the following but not limited to:
- Identify the appropriate end-to-end solution portfolio, considering all relevant ICT solutions and service offerings such as best practices.
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Identify solution gaps and develop gap closure options such as the inclusion of components from Independent Software Vendors or customer-specific development.
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Architect the end-to-end functional landscape and solution design to support desired business processes and business/ICT requirements of the customer, ensuring alignment.
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Design robust and reusable technical solutions to support the deployment of greenfield and brownfield cloud platforms in either Azure or AWS.
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Design, build and maintain secure, scalable and highly available cloud infrastructure supporting Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Generative AI services.
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Lead the implementation, configuration and optimisation of enterprise AI platforms, ensuring performance, resilience and operational excellence.
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Provide technical guidance, documentation, and training to teams on best practices for both Azure and AWS environments.
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Document, present and discuss the end-to-end solution options, recommendations and implications, facilitate and support the decision process.
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Identify cross-process and cross-solution integration points and lead the coordination across various software and service components of the end-to-end solution.
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Lead end-to-end solution analysis, design, integration, architecture, co-existence and migration.
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Ensure AI platforms comply with organisational security, governance and regulatory requirements through the application of DevSecOps and secure-by-design principles.
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Ensure work aligns with business processes and overall delivery outcomes.
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At times the Senior Cloud Engineer will be required to act as a single point of contact to orchestrate the various parties involved in large and complex projects/programs from a primarily technical perspective.
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Drive innovation, continuous improvement and manage and lead change.
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Proactively share knowledge and expertise as the subject matter expert.
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Oversee and prepare a range of documentation and reports.
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Collaborate with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders to achieve project outcomes.
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Resolve very complex, sensitive and/or escalated technical issues.
Technical Skills
- Experience in governance and security: Implementing policies, guardrails, RBAC/IAM, and tools like AWS Security Hub or Azure Security Center.
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Experience with DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Azure DevOps, AWS CodePipeline), and scripting (PowerShell, Python, Bash).
Experience with the migration and deployment of cloud-based AI workloads including architecture, data migration, model deployment and platform integration.
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Essential Criteria
- Business process improvement: Level 6 (SFIA):
Plans and leads strategic, large and complex business process improvement activities aligned with automation, or exploiting existing or new technologies. Develops organisational policies, standards, and guidelines for business process improvement. Leads the introduction of techniques, methodologies and tools to meet business requirements, ensuring consistency across all user groups. Leads the development of organisational capabilities for business process improvement and ensures adoption and adherence to policies and standards. -
Consultancy: Level 6 (SFIA):
Manages the provision of consultancy services and/or a team of consultants. In own areas of expertise, provides advice and guidance to consultants and/or the client when delivering consultancy services. Engages with clients and maintains client relationships. Establishes consultancy agreements/contracts and manages completion and disengagement. -
Emerging technology monitoring: Level 5 (SFIA):
Monitors the external environment to gather intelligence on emerging technologies. Assesses and documents the impacts, threats and opportunities to the organisation. Creates reports and technology roadmaps and shares knowledge and insights with others. -
Enterprise and business architecture: Level 5 (SFIA):
Develops models and plans to drive the execution of the business strategy, taking advantage of opportunities to improve business performance. Contributes to creating and reviewing a systems capability strategy which meets the business's strategic requirements. Determines requirements and specifies effective business processes, through improvements in technology, information or data practices, organisation, roles, procedures and equipment. -
Innovation: Level 6 (SFIA):
Obtains organisational commitment to innovation. Develops organisational capabilities to drive innovation. Leads and plans the development of innovation capabilities and implementation of innovation processes, tools and frameworks. Leads the communication and an open flow of creative ideas between interested parties and the set-up of innovation networks and communities. -
Software design: Level 5 (SFIA):
Specifies and designs large or complex software applications, components and modules. Adopts and adapts software design methods, tools and techniques. Undertakes impact analysis on major design options, makes recommendations and assesses and manages associated risks. Specifies prototypes/simulations to enable informed decision-making. Evaluates software designs to ensure adherence to standards and identifies corrective action. Ensures that the software design balances functional, quality, security and systems management requirements. Contributes to the development of organisational software design and architecture policies and standards. -
Solution architecture: Level 5 (SFIA):
Leads the development of solution architectures in specific business, infrastructure or functional areas. Leads the preparation of technical plans and ensures that appropriate technical resources are made available. Ensures that appropriate tools and methods are available, understood and employed in architecture development. Provides technical guidance and governance on solution development and integration. Evaluates requests for changes and deviations from specifications and recommends actions. Ensures that relevant technical strategies, policies, standards and practices (including security) are applied correctly. -
Stakeholder relationship management: Level 6 (SFIA):
Leads the development of comprehensive stakeholder management strategies and plans. Builds long-term, strategic relationships with senior stakeholders (internal and external). Facilitates the engagement of stakeholders in support of the delivery of services and change projects. Acts as a single point of contact for senior stakeholders, facilitating relationships between them. Negotiates to ensure that stakeholders understand and agree on what will meet their needs, and that appropriate agreements are defined. Oversees monitoring of relationships including lessons learned and appropriate feedback. Leads actions to improve relations and open communications with and between stakeholders. -
Systems design: Level 6 (SFIA):
Develops and drives adoption of and adherence to organisational policies, standards, guidelines, and methods for system design. Champions the importance and value of system design principles and the selection of appropriate systems design life cycle models. Leads system design activities for strategic, large and complex systems development programmes. Develops effective implementation strategies consistent with specified requirements, architectures and constraints of performance and feasibility. Develops system design requiring the introduction of new technologies or new uses for existing technologies.
HOW TO APPLY
Please provide an updated CV (a maximum of 3-5 pages) to reflect your suitability to the role based on the job description. You will also need to complete a response to the Essential and Desirable criteria above in a summary no more than 5000 characters in total.
