Our Federal Government Client is seeking a AI Engineer and a Senior AI Cloud Engineer. This is a long-term contract role from 5 January 2026 to 3 January 2027 with 2 x 12 months extension options, located at our client’s offices in Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, Melbourne or Sydney, working 40 hours per week.

As the selected candidate, you will:
• Design and build Gen AI and Standard AI solutions using the latest industry concepts
• Apply robust Data Engineering principles in the development of AI solutions
• Use domain expertise and innovative thinking to design scalable solutions
• Identify customer needs, understand business goals, and define high-level solution architectures
• Translate complex requirements into clear technical designs for technical and non-technical audiences
• Design scalable, secure, ethical, and cost-optimised AI solutions
• Keep abreast of cloud computing advances relevant to AI and Data Engineering
• Provide expert advice on strategic solution design and tool selection
• Collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, validate ideas, and propose strategic alternatives

To be successful in this role you should have:
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent
• 7+ years’ experience delivering AI, ML and Data Engineering solutions at scale
• Strong understanding of end-to-end AI solutions and modern cloud-based Data Engineering
• Advanced Machine Learning and full-lifecycle MLOps experience
• Strong data engineering skills including preprocessing, feature engineering, and big data tools
• Expertise with LLMs/SLMs, fine-tuning, evaluation, observability and monitoring
• Experience with RAG, Model Distillation, and advanced Prompt Engineering
• Strong containerisation and orchestration experience (Kubernetes)
• Proven experience building Agentic AI solutions
• Strong experience with LangChain, LangGraph or similar frameworks
• Solid Python programming skills
• Experience applying Responsible/Ethical AI controls
• Knowledge of relational and non-relational databases
• AWS Cloud computing experience
• Experience with platform-specific AI/ML services (e.g., Kubeflow, AWS Bedrock, AWS Comprehend)
• Experience designing and implementing automation
• Experience building and orchestrating ETL/ELT and other data pipelines
• Ability to provide expert solution design and tool selection advice
• Advanced strategic and critical thinking skills
• Ability to lead technical direction and mentor junior engineers
• Highly adaptable with strong trend awareness and learning mindset
• Ability to mediate between teams and resolve technical disagreements
• Experience in large organisations and large cloud deployments
• Strong communication, collaboration, and relationship-building skills
• Ability to influence teams to adopt modern methodologies
• Ability to work effectively in projects and within SCRUM frameworks

It is desirable if you have:
• Experience in large-scale government environments
• Experience working across multiple cloud teams or AI engineering groups
• Broader knowledge of digital accessibility and responsible use of AI in public sector settings

Due to security clearance requirements for this role, candidates must be Australian citizens with Baseline security clearance (or ability to obtain Baseline)
Apply now for immediate consideration – contact Param Kaur on 02 6268 9*** quoting Job Reference: #269142.

The closing date for this role is on 05th December 2025. Expression of Interest for other Senior AI Cloud Engineer roles will remain open until 2nd January 2026.
Please note: Only candidates that meet the above criteria will be contacted. Thank you for your interest in the position.

Peoplebank and Leaders IT are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive workplace where everyone belongs. We welcome applications from people of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences. If you need adjustments to the recruitment process due to your circumstances, please let us know—we’re here to support you.