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Development

Five (5) Senior Software Engineer

Department of Employment and Workplace Relations

Canberra, ACT Baseline clearance Closes 26 May 2026 at 11:59pm

About the Role

Software Engineers have experience overseeing software development projects, writing optimised code, and provide technical leadership to a team of software engineers. They are responsible for the quality and functionality of the software produced by their team.

Key duties and responsibilities

The Specified Personnel will be responsible for providing the following deliverables including but not limited to:

  • Providing technical design, development, implementation, and maintenance of large and complex applications;

  • Participating in the design and development of technical changes that meet business requirements while being aligned with Enterprise Architecture artefacts;

  • Developing, maintaining and unit testing system components;

  • Providing application development in line with Departmental standards and methodologies;

  • Providing coding, unit testing and maintaining complex J2EE applications and components;

  • Developing and maintaining system design documentation;

  • Undertaking database design and development;

  • Contributing to architectural issues;

  • Troubleshooting production issues and incidents;

  • Providing development effort estimates for changes to existing applications and new applications;

  • Providing Code Reviews and other Quality Assurance tasks for projects and for code delivered by the Section;

  • Providing status reports to Development Managers;

  • Working within small development teams;

  • Liaising with business analysts, testers and other stakeholders to efficiently deliver high quality work;

  • Managing defects including:

    • triaging defects to determine priorities and defect fix implementation;

    • analysing and identifying the root causes contributing to incidents and problems.

Specified Personnel will be expected to transfer skills and knowledge to departmental staff and ensure appropriate documentation is stored in accordance with the Department’s recordkeeping policy and practices.

The Specified Personnel will be responsible for producing the following deliverables, including but not limited to:

  • Software specifications

  • Integration interface specifications

  • Software architecture designs

  • Deployment plans

  • Release notes

  • Transfer skills and knowledge to departmental staff

  • Documentation is stored in accordance with the Department’s recordkeeping policy and practices

All deliverables performed by the specified personnel must:

  1. be performed or delivered promptly and without delay in accordance with the timeframes notified by the buyer from time to time; and

  2. meet the assessment and performance criteria set out in any monitoring and performance assessment processes notified to the seller from time to time.

Requirements

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

  • Programming/software development: Level 5 (SFIA)

    Takes technical responsibility across all stages and iterations of software development. Plans and drives software construction activities. Adopts and adapts appropriate software development methods, tools and techniques. Measures and monitors applications of project/team standards for software construction, including software security. Contributes to the development of organisational policies, standards, and guidelines for software development.

  • Software configuration: Level 5 (SFIA)

    Takes technical responsibility across all stages and iterations of configuration development and deployment. Plans and drives software configuration activities. Adopts and adapts appropriate software configuration methods, tools and techniques. Measures and monitors the application of standards for configuration design and deployment including software security. Contributes to the development of organisational policies, standards, and guidelines for software configuration design and deployment.

  • Specialist advice: Level 4 (SFIA)

    Provides detailed and specific advice regarding the application of their specialism to the organisation's planning and operations. Actively maintains knowledge in one or more identifiable specialisms. Recognises and identifies the boundaries of their own specialist knowledge. Where appropriate, collaborates with other specialists to ensure advice given is appropriate to the organisation's needs.

  • 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.

  • Systems integration and build: Level 5 (SFIA)

    Plans and drives activities to develop organisational systems integration and build capabilities including automation and continuous integration. Identifies, evaluates and manages the adoption of tools, techniques and processes to create a robust integration framework. Provides authoritative advice and guidance on any aspect of systems integration. Leads integration work in line with the agreed system and service design. Assesses risks and takes preventative action. Measures and monitors applications of standards. Contributes to the development of organisational policies, standards, and guidelines for systems integration.

  • Testing: Level 4 (SFIA)

    Selects appropriate testing approach, including manual and automated testing. Develops and executes test plans and test cases. Implements scalable and reliable automated tests and frameworks. Collaborates across parties involved in product, systems or service design and development to enable comprehensive test coverage. Identifies improvements in requirements, design or specification processes to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of testing. Analyses and reports on test activities, results, issues and risks, including the work of others.

Desirable criteria

  • Configuration management: Level 2 (SFIA)

    Applies tools, techniques and processes to administer, track, log, report on and correct configuration items, components and changes. Assists with audits to check the accuracy of the information and undertakes any necessary corrective action under direction.

Rate on application

If there is mutual interest, we will talk you through the rate structure and next steps in more detail.

Apply for this role

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