Role Details

• Internal Title: Head of AI Engineering
• Location: Eveleigh, Sydney, NSW
• Assignment Length: 12 months (Start Date: 30 September 2025)
• Hours: 40 hours per week

About the Role
This NSW Government Department is seeking a Head of AI Engineering to lead its Data, Integration, and AI Engineering division. This is a senior executive leadership role responsible for driving strategic technology initiatives that impact educational outcomes for more than 800,000 students across 2,200+ schools.

Reporting to the Chief Information Officer, you will oversee a team of 40 professionals across three specialised pillars:

• Operations (18 staff): Azure cloud platforms, enterprise data lakes, real-time analytics, database operations, integration middleware, and platform engineering.
• Engineering (8 staff): AI-assisted software engineering, R&D, engineering excellence, developer experience, and technical standards.
• AI Products & Solutions (20 staff): Education data lakes, AI software products, machine learning operations, and cross-functional delivery teams.

This role requires a blend of hands-on technical expertise and strategic leadership, with a mandate to drive innovation, resilience, and scalability across the department’s data and AI ecosystem.

Key Responsibilities

• Partner with the CIO to define and execute data, digital, and AI strategy.
• Provide thought leadership on emerging technologies and their application in education.
• Architect scalable, secure, and resilient technology solutions.
• Establish technical standards and engineering practices across data, integration, and AI domains.
• Lead, mentor, and grow a high-performing technical organisation.
• Foster a culture of innovation, continuous learning, and operational excellence.
• Oversee day-to-day operations, monitoring, and incident response.
• Collaborate with senior stakeholders, security teams, and external partners.

About You
You are a proven technology leader with:

• 10+ years in progressive technology leadership, including 5+ years in senior executive roles.
• Experience building and scaling technical organisations (20+ engineers).
• Strong background in digital transformation within large, complex organisations (government/enterprise preferred).
• Deep hands-on software engineering expertise (Python frameworks).
• Advanced knowledge of cloud platforms (Azure preferred, AWS/GCP valuable).
• Strong AI/ML implementation background, including MLOps and responsible AI practices.
• Extensive experience with enterprise data architecture, data lakes, and streaming analytics.
• Proficiency in infrastructure-as-code, containerisation, and cloud-native architectures.
• Understanding of data governance, compliance frameworks, and security monitoring.

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