Senior Cloud AI Engineer Cloud Engineer

Infrastructure Engineers implement, manage and retire the infrastructure (including physical, virtual, networking and cloud infrastructure) that supports digital services. Services Australia is seeking to procure cloud AI Engineers (experts) with demonstratable experience with AI cloud 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 Cloud AI Engineering capabilities, including AI workload migrations, deployment and operations. As a Cloud AI Engineer, you will specialise in either on-premise cloud-native or 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 building secure-by-design architectures, incorporating reusable patterns and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to deliver scalable, compliant solutions in line with APS frameworks and regulations. You will collaborate 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 Cloud Engineer Developer EL1 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 Cloud AI Engineer is vital in ensuring that Services Australia effectively leverages technology to enhance service delivery and meet the needs of the community.  Develop, describe present and influence outcomes and/or findings across various forums. Excellent problem-solving, communication, and leadership skills in a collaborative environment. Key duties and responsibilities 1. Duties may include some or all of the following: Identify the appropriate end-to-end solution portfolio, considering all relevant ICT solutions and service offerings such as best practices. Identify solution gaps and develop gap closure options such as the inclusion of components from Independent Software Vendors or customer-specific development. Solution the end-to-end functional landscape and solution design to support desired business processes and business/ICT requirements of the customer, ensuring alignment. Design robust and reusable products and features to support the deployment of greenfield and brownfield platforms in either on-premise or public cloud. Design, build and maintain secure, scalable and highly available cloud infrastructure supporting Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Generative AI services. Lead the implementation, configuration and optimisation of enterprise AI solutions, ensuring performance, resilience and operational excellence. Provide technical guidance, documentation, and training to APS teams on best practices. Document, present and discuss the end-to-end solution options, recommendations and implications, facilitate and support the decision process. Identify cross-process and cross-solution integration points and lead the coordination across various software and service components of the end-to-end solution.  Lead end-to-end solution analysis, design, integration, co-existence and migration. Ensure AI platforms/solutions comply with organisational security, governance and regulatory requirements through the application of DevSecOps and secure-by-design principles. Ensure work aligns with business processes and overall delivery outcomes. Act as single point of contact to orchestrate the various parties involved in large and complex projects/programs from a primarily architecture/technical perspective. Drive innovation, continuous improvement and manage and lead change. Proactively share knowledge and expertise as the subject matter expert. Oversee and prepare a range of solution documentation and reports. Collaborate with a broad range of internal and external stakeholders to achieve project outcomes.  Resolve very complex, sensitive and/or escalated technical issues. 2. Desirable knowledge, qualifications or experience: Strong communication and negotiation skills. Professional presentation skills Experience in Kubernetes, OpenShift and OpenShift AI, 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-premise 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 GPU engineering, including NVIDIA GPUs, CUDA fundamentals, GPU scheduling and resource allocation, GPU utilisation and troubleshooting. 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 SageMakero r Azure AI/ML. Experience in object storage and data management, including S3-compatible storage for OpenShift AI pipelines, models and datasets. Experience in observability and operational monitoring, including Prometheus/Grafana, 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. Criteria The buyer has specified that each candidate must provide a one page pitch to address all criteria specified. This is equal to 5000 characters. Essential criteria 1. Availability management: Level 5 (SFIA) Provides advice and guidance on the planning, design and improvement of service and component availability. Investigates all breaches of availability targets and service non-availability and initiates remedial activities. Develops plans for disaster recovery together with supporting processes. Manages the testing of disaster recovery plans. 2. Capacity management: Level 4 (SFIA) Monitors service component capacity and initiates actions to resolve any shortfalls according to agreed procedures. Applies techniques to control the demand upon a particular resource or service. Contributes to capacity modelling and planning. Supports the design of service component capacity. 3. IT infrastructure: Level 4 (SFIA) Provides technical expertise to enable the correct application of operational procedures. Contributes to the planning and implementation of infrastructure maintenance and updates. Implements agreed infrastructure changes and maintenance routines. Uses infrastructure management tools to determine load and performance statistics. Configures tools and/or creates scripts to automate the provisioning, testing and deployment of new and changed infrastructure. Maintains operational procedures and checks that they are executed following agreed standards. Investigates and enables the resolution of operational issues. Provides reports and proposals for improvement, to specialists, users and managers. 4. Problem management: Level 4 (SFIA) Initiates and monitors actions to investigate and resolve problems in systems, processes and services. Determines problem fixes and remedies. Collaborates with others to implemented agreed remedies and preventative measures. Supports analysis of patterns and trends to improve problem management processes. 5. Programming/software development: Level 3 (SFIA) Designs, codes, verifies, tests, documents, amends and refactors moderately complex programs/scripts. Applies agreed standards and tools to achieve a well-engineered result. Monitors and reports on progress. Identifies issues related to software development activities. Proposes practical solutions to resolve issues. Collaborates in reviews of work with others as appropriate. 6. Systems design: Level 5 (SFIA) Designs large or complex systems and undertakes impact analysis on major design options and trade-offs. Ensures that the system design balances functional and non-functional requirements. Reviews systems designs and ensures that appropriate methods, tools and techniques are applied effectively. Makes recommendations and assesses and manages associated risks. Adopts and adapts system design methods, tools and techniques. Contributes to development of system design policies, standards and selection of architecture components. 7. Systems installation and removal: Level 5 (SFIA) Takes responsibility for installation and/or decommissioning projects. Provides effective team leadership, including information flow to and from the customer during project work. Develops and implements quality plans and method statements. Monitors the effectiveness of installations and ensures that appropriate recommendations for change are made. Opportunity summary Sellers can submit Up to 3 candidates Number of sellers invited More than 10 Number of candidates submitted Fewer than 10 Send us feedback About Accessibility Privacy Terms of use Disclaimer and copyright An initiative of the Digital Transformation Agency The Australian Government acknowledges the Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and acknowledges their continuing connection to land, waters and community. We pay our respects to the people, the cultures and the Elders past and present. © Commonwealth of Australia