About the job Lead Microservices and AI Technical Architect - Long Contract

Our Federal Government client, is looking for a Lead Microservices and AI Technical Architect for a contract role with an initial 12-month engagement and a likely further extensions. They are looking for someone, preferably based in Canberra, ACT in a hybrid capacity but will also consider, for a suitable candidate, someone from an Australian capital city, also working in a hybrid capacity from their state-based office. For this latter engagement ad-hoc travel will be required to Canberra from time to time.

Note: * MANDATORY, all candidates must be an Australian citizen and hold a current Baseline clearance OR be able to obtain Baseline clearance,

- All candidates must have the skills and experience listed below, and
- Have at least 5 year's relevant local working experience in the field.

Key duties and responsibilities:

- Provide technical leadership and architectural direction for cloud-native, microservices and AI-enabled platforms, ensuring alignment with enterprise architecture, security and business objectives.
- Lead modern engineering and AI delivery practices, including AI-enabled SDLC, DevSecOps, CI/CD, observability, automated testing and platform engineering standards.
- Drive technology modernisation and platform adoption, including microservices, containerisation, enterprise system integration and reusable architecture patterns to improve scalability, maintainability and operational resilience.

The successful candidate will need the following capabilities:

Essential criteria -

- At least 5 years architectural experience in cloud-native, microservices and event-driven practices delivering scalable, resilient and secure enterprise platforms.
- Experience designing,



implementing and operating container platforms using technologies such as Kubernetes, OpenShift, AKS, EKS or GKE.
- Proven expertise in AI engineering and AI-enabled solutions, including enterprise AI, semantic search, machine learning and responsible AI practices.
- Solid software and platform engineering capability across DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, observability and security-by-design.
- Experience leading technology modernisation and transformation, providing technical direction and improving platform reliability, security, scalability and engineering maturity.
- Excellent stakeholder engagement and leadership skills, with experience working across multidisciplinary teams, delivery partners and senior executives to translate business needs into practical technology solutions.

Desirable criteria -

- Experience with platform automation, governance and workload management.
- Experience with cloud platform modernisation, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), platform engineering, observability tooling and enterprise scale automation practices.
- Experience leading delivery within Agile environments, including coaching geographically dispersed teams, driving capability uplift

Notes: * Detailed job description is available upon request.
- Your daily rate will depend on skills, experience.
- Start date for this assignment is anticipated to be October 2026.
- Full time requirement, standard 8 hours per day (40 hours per week) and flexible/hybrid working arrangements provided will be considered.
- The successful candidate must provide a one page summary of their alignment with the key criteria specified above (up to 5000 characters).
- Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.

If you feel this role is for you, then please press "Apply" now --

📌 Lead Microservices and AI Technical Architect - Long Contract (Canberra)
🏢 Vertali
📍 Canberra