Fullstack Software Engineer (GenAI Platforms) - Part-Time

• 1-year contract, renewable
• Government project
• Hybrid work arrangement

We are looking for a Full-Stack Software Engineer to drive the development of a Whole-of-Government Chat platform, incorporating modern search architectures and Generative AI capabilities.

You will lead by example, guide architectural decisions, mentor engineers, and champion strong engineering practices while responsibly introducing emerging technologies such as GenAI into production systems.

What to Expect

Technical Leadership

• Provide technical leadership to an agile, cross-functional development team
• Define and communicate technical vision across multiple workstreams
• Collaborate with other Tech Leads to plan technical spikes and long-term technical strategy beyond sprint scope
• Identify technical risks early and lead mitigation strategies
• Lead resolution of technical blockers and retrospective improvements
• Ensure engineering standards are upheld across the team
• Represent the development team in governance and stakeholder meetings
• Mentor and coach engineers to grow both technically and professionally

Architecture & AI Systems

• Design scalable, secure, and resilient architectures for search and AI-powered systems
• Make architectural trade-offs balancing performance, cost, reliability, and security
• Architect systems leveraging:LLM integrations (e.g. Azure OpenAI, OpenAI APIs, etc.)Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)Semantic search and vector databases
• Establish guardrails for AI systems including:Evaluation frameworksObservability and monitoringData governance and security considerations
• Guide the team from experimentation prototype production-ready AI systems
• Evaluate emerging AI technologies and assess suitability for public sector use cases

Engineering Excellence

• Champion Agile technical practices (TDD, pair programming, refactoring, CI/CD)
• Lead DevOps adoption including build, release automation, and infrastructure improvements
• Oversee automated testing strategy (unit, integration, performance)

Stakeholder Collaboration

• Work closely with Product Owners and Business Analysts to prioritise business stories and technical investments
• Collaborate with UX Designers for feasibility studies and solution estimation
• Partner with Delivery Managers on long-term planning, system integrations, and resource forecasting

How to Succeed

Experience

• 5–7+ years of experience in web application development
• Proven experience leading agile development teams

Technical Skills

Strong hands-on experience with:

• Node.js
• TypeScript
• Cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP)
• SQL & NoSQL databases
• CI/CD pipelines
• DevOps practices

Search & AI Experience

Designed or led systems involving:

• Search engines (crawl, index, ranking, relevance tuning)
• Semantic search or vector search
• RAG architectures
• Production experience integrating LLMs into applications

Experience managing AI-related trade-offs:

• Latency vs cost
• Accuracy vs hallucination risks
• Prompt engineering strategies
• Model evaluation methodologies

Understanding of:

• AI system governance
• Security
• Responsible AI practices

Personal Attributes

• Strong coaching and mentoring capabilities
• Comfortable leading technical discussions and influencing stakeholders
• Proactive self-starter with strong ownership mindset
• Passionate about continuous improvement
• Curious about emerging technologies and willing to experiment responsibly
• Strong communication and stakeholder management skills
• Meticulous attention to quality and engineering standards