Staff IT Systems Engineer, ICT Lead (R5660)
Regional ICT Lead for Shield AI's Australian hub in Melbourne: a hands-on leadership role owning the small regional ICT team, the end-to-end network, cloud (AWS/Azure), endpoints and identity services, with a heavy focus on defence export-control (ITAR/EAR/DTCA) and sovereignty compliance (Essential Eight, ISM, DISP).
- Compensation
- Not disclosed
- Location
- Melbourne
- Work setup
- Onsite
- Seniority
- Staff
- Employment
- Not specified
- Experience
- 3+ years
- Category
- Software engineering
- Posted
Skills
Must have
- Australian citizenship, and NV1 security clearance held or demonstrated ability to obtain and maintain one
- 10+ years in enterprise ICT across infrastructure, network and systems administration
- 3+ years directly leading technical teams, including hiring and performance management
- Enterprise networking ownership: routing/switching, SD-WAN/WAN, firewalls, VLANs/segmentation, wireless, VPN, DNS, DHCP, monitoring
- Hands-on cloud engineering in AWS and/or Azure, including identity federation, network integration, IaC and cost management
- Strong administration across Windows, macOS and Linux with Active Directory, Entra ID, group policy, IAM, Intune and Jamf
- Practical experience working inside a multinational structure, ideally as in-country lead
- Working knowledge of ITAR, EAR, Defence Trade Controls Act 2012 and Australian Government classification/handling
- Experience operating in classified, need-to-know or access-restricted environments
- Scripting and automation capability (PowerShell, Bash or Python)
- Excellent written and verbal communication with executives, customers and certifiers
- Willingness to travel, participate in on-call rotation and support after-hours maintenance
Nice to have
- Experience with a defence prime, defence SME or Defence delivering ICT into Australian Defence programs
- Familiarity with AUKUS Pillar 2 arrangements or equivalent bilateral technology-sharing frameworks
- Experience establishing/maintaining DISP membership or supporting IRAP assessments and ISM-aligned accreditation
- Experience standing up ICT for a new site, facility or country entry
- Exposure to Indo-Pacific delivery, partner-nation engagement or deployed operations
- Experience automating IT operations using agentic AI capability
- Relevant certifications: AWS or Azure architecture, CCNP or equivalent, CISSP, ITIL
Full description
Shield AI is a venture-backed defense-tech company with the mission of protecting service members and civilians with intelligent systems. Its products include Hivemind autonomy software, V-BAT and X-BAT aircraft, and Aechelon simulation and synthetic reality technologies. With offices and facilities across the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia-Pacific, Shield AI’s technology actively supports operations worldwide. For more information, visit . Follow Shield AI on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and YouTube.
Job Description:
The Regional ICT Lead is accountable for the design, delivery and secure operation of all information and communications technology supporting Shield AI’s Australian regional hub and its programs across the Asia Pacific and Middle East. The role leads a small, high-calibre ICT team and is the single point of regional accountability for network, cloud, endpoint and identity services, and for the compliance controls that allow a US-parented business to deliver sovereign Australian defence outcomes.
This is a hands-on leadership role. It combines people and vendor management with deep technical credibility, and it requires the judgement to reconcile global enterprise standards with Australian sovereignty, export-control and need-to-know obligations. The successful candidate will be equally comfortable in a server room, in front of a customer or certifier, and in a policy discussion with the parent company’s security and IT leadership.
What you'll do:
Team leadership and ICT management
- Lead, develop and grow a small team of ICT professionals; own hiring, performance management, workload allocation, on-call rostering and capability development.
- Set the regional ICT strategy, roadmap and annual operating plan; own the regional ICT budget, forecasting and capital planning.
- Manage local vendors, managed service providers, carriers and licensing agreements, including commercial negotiation and service-level accountability.
- Establish and enforce regional standards for documentation, change management, incident response and service delivery, aligned to ITIL or an equivalent framework.
Network and infrastructure
- Own the end-to-end regional network: campus and access-layer switching, wireless, routing, SD-WAN and WAN services, firewalls, VPN, DNS, DHCP, and monitoring.
- Design and maintain segmented network enclaves that separate corporate, program and test environments in line with data-handling and need-to-know requirements.
- Own site-to-site connectivity with the US parent company and partner organisations, including the controls that govern what traverses those links.
- Deliver connectivity and compute for deployed, remote and flight-test locations, including transportable and low-bandwidth environments.