Lead Microservices and AI Technical Architect

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Lead Microservices and AI Technical Architect based in Australia.

This is a senior technical leadership opportunity focused on transforming enterprise application delivery through cloud-native, microservices, event-driven, and AI-enabled architectures.

You will provide architectural authority across critical platforms while shaping technology strategy, engineering standards, and modern delivery practices.

A major focus will be establishing enterprise microservices and event-driven foundations and embedding AI throughout the software delivery lifecycle.

You will influence architecture and engineering decisions, helping teams deliver secure, scalable, resilient, and maintainable platforms.

The role combines hands-on technical expertise with strategic leadership, stakeholder engagement, governance, and capability development.

You will work across multidisciplinary teams and delivery partners, transferring knowledge and raising engineering maturity throughout the program.

The engagement offers flexible and remote working arrangements where operational requirements allow, within a 12-month contract with potential extensions.

Accountabilities

• Provide technical leadership and architectural authority for the design, governance, evolution, and adoption of cloud-native, microservices-based, event-driven, and AI-enabled platforms.
• Ensure architecture and engineering decisions align with enterprise architecture, security requirements, business transformation objectives, and operational needs.
• Establish modern engineering and AI-enabled software development lifecycle practices, including DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, and platform engineering standards.
• Guide the adoption of AI across the software delivery lifecycle, including appropriate approaches to AI-assisted engineering, enterprise AI capabilities, and responsible AI practices.
• Drive technology modernisation and platform adoption through microservices enhancement, containerisation, enterprise integration, and reusable architectural patterns.
• Promote scalable, maintainable, secure, and operationally resilient solutions across business-critical platforms.
• Provide technical direction for platform engineering, automation, reliability, security by design, and operational excellence.
• Influence architecture and engineering governance while supporting consistent standards across multidisciplinary delivery teams.
• Build organisational capability through mentoring, knowledge transfer, technical coaching, and continuous improvement initiatives.
• Lead and collaborate with multidisciplinary teams, delivery partners, and senior stakeholders to translate complex business requirements into practical technology outcomes.
• Champion engineering excellence and support the ongoing maturity of cloud, platform, microservices, AI, and software delivery capabilities.

Requirements:

• Extensive experience designing, implementing, and governing cloud-native, microservices, and event-driven architectures within complex enterprise environments.
• Proven ability to deliver scalable, resilient, secure, and business-critical technology platforms.
• Strong expertise in AI engineering and AI-enabled solution delivery, including enterprise AI capabilities, semantic search, machine learning solutions, deployment, operationalisation, and responsible AI practices.
• Strong software and platform engineering background covering modern development frameworks, DevSecOps, CI/CD, automated testing, observability, security by design, and operational excellence.
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise technology modernisation and transformation programs, with the ability to influence architecture decisions and deliver measurable improvements in reliability, security, scalability, and engineering maturity.
• Exceptional stakeholder engagement and communication skills, with experience working with multidisciplinary teams, delivery partners, senior executives, and other decision-makers.
• Strong leadership and influencing capabilities, including the ability to translate complex technical and business requirements into clear, practical outcomes.
• Experience with container platforms such as Kubernetes, OpenShift, AKS, EKS, or GKE is highly desirable, including platform automation, governance, and workload management.
• Experience with cloud platform modernisation, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), platform engineering, observability tooling, and enterprise-scale automation is highly desirable.
• Experience leading delivery in Agile environments, including coaching geographically distributed teams and driving technical capability uplift.
• Demonstrated commitment to collaboration, innovation, engineering excellence, and continuous improvement.
• Baseline security clearance is mandatory.

Benefits:

• $120-$140 per hour, including superannuation.
• 12-month contract commencing 1 October 2026.
• Potential for two additional 12-month contract extensions.
• Flexible and remote working arrangements where operational requirements permit.
• Opportunity to shape enterprise-wide microservices, event-driven architecture, and AI-enabled engineering practices.
• Senior-level technical leadership role with significant influence over architecture, engineering standards, and technology transformation.
• Opportunity to build organisational capability through mentoring, knowledge transfer, and technical leadership.
• Work across complex, business-critical technology platforms and multidisciplinary delivery teams.
• Location of work: Victoria (VIC), Australia.