The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) is an independent Commonwealth statutory authority responsible for the regulation of broadcasting, radiocommunications, telecommunications and some online content.
This work underpins our vision for a connected, informed and entertained Australia.
Who we are
The Corporate and Research Division partners with business areas across the ACMA, to provide enterprise wide enabling services and strategic advice so that the ACMA can achieve its purpose. The Division facilitates this through the delivery of key corporate functions including financial management, property services, security, procurement advice, performance reporting, research and data, digital and technology services, human resources, communications, and governance services.
The Research, Data and Governance Branch is at the forefront of shaping and delivering impactful consumer and market research that drives regulatory decisions and supports the ACMA’s compliance and enforcement priorities. We champion the ACMA’s data strategy and governance framework, ensuring agency decision-making is supported by high-quality data, sharp analytics, and solid evidence-based insights. The Branch also provides essential governance services, robust risk and fraud management frameworks, seamless parliamentary coordination, efficient internal audit contract management, and targeted international advice and services. The Branch supports the Audit and Risk Committee with secretariat services and oversees the ACMA’s strategic planning and performance reporting.
The Data Platform Services Section is responsible for designing, delivering, and maintaining a modern, scalable enterprise-wide data platform that supports ACMA’s analytical and operational need. Our focus is ensuring that the platform is optimised to meet evolving business requirements and enabling advanced capabilities such as self-service analytics and data science.
The team plays a lead role in enhancing data platform architecture and tooling to support robust analytics, governance, building and maintaining data pipelines along with proactively monitoring and optimising platform for performance and reliability.
We ensure that the ACMA’s data platform is ready to take full advantage of new technical developments and opportunities.
About the role
If you’re a Data Engineer passionate about modern data platforms and emerging technologies, and eager to contribute to initiatives across data engineering, Machine Learning and data science, we’d love to hear from you.
As a Principal Data Engineer, you will operate beyond traditional data engineering by owning the architectural direction, technical leadership, and strategic uplift of our cloud‑based data platform. You will play a pivotal role in enabling advanced analytics, data science, and AI capabilities, while leading the ongoing modernisation and evolution of our data and analytics landscape to support emerging technologies, scalable patterns and future business needs.
This role will involve working within a highly collaborative team, with opportunities to grow your expertise in modern data tech stack and expand your knowledge with hands on experience with latest data engineering and cloud technologies.
Key Duties
In this role you will:
* Own the end‑to‑end design, architecture, and technical governance of Azure-based enterprise data platforms, ensuring scalability, resilience, and alignment with long‑term organisational strategy
* Define and champion architectural standards, data models, integration patterns, and engineering best practices across teams, influencing platform evolution and engineering direction
* Provide senior technical leadership by collaborating with Section managers, Data and Solution Architects, Analysts, Engineers, and Executive stakeholders to define platform direction, influence architectural decisions, and ensure solutions align with long‑term data strategy
* Act as a technical advisor, partnering with architects, managers, SMEs, and business stakeholders to ensure data solutions meet enterprise architecture and strategic outcomes
* Lead research and development of proof‑of‑concepts for emerging data technologies, ingestion patterns and modern architectures, driving innovation and contributing directly to ACMA data strategy outlined in the Data strategy 2025
* Create, maintain, and govern technical documentation and standards, including enterprise integration patterns, architecture blueprints, platform reference models, best‑practice engineering guidelines
* Mentor Senior and Mid‑level Data Engineers, providing technical coaching, setting engineering standards, and developing the organisation’s data engineering capability
* Oversee and guide the delivery, deployment, and operationalisation of new data products and platform capabilities, ensuring production readiness and adherence to best practices.
To be eligible for employment with ACMA, applicants must be an Australian citizen.
The successful candidate will also be required to obtain and maintain a Baseline level security clearance .