Principal Consultant / Principal Engineer
* Location: Australia (Hybrid / Flexible)
* Type: Full-time
* Level: Principal (10+ years experience)
The Opportunity
We are seeking a Principal Consultant/Principal Engineer to serve as the primary technical authority and trusted advisor for complex, high-impact client engagements within large, regulated organisations.
In this role, you will lead technical strategy and delivery, guide senior stakeholders through complex decisions, and help shape technology direction across multi-cloud and hybrid environments. Youll combine deep hands-on expertise with strong consulting skills — building trust with clients while elevating engineering standards internally.
This is a senior, influential role for someone who enjoys owning outcomes, navigating ambiguity, and shaping both technical solutions and delivery practices.
What Youll Be Responsible For
* Acting as a trusted technical advisor to senior client stakeholders
* Leading end-to-end delivery: concept design, implementation, Day-2 operations
* Designing and delivering secure, scalable, cloud-native and distributed systems
* Applying DevOps, DevSecOps, and SRE principles to complex delivery environments
* Guiding teams through complex technical challenges, including deep root cause analysis
* Facilitating blameless post-mortems and continuous improvement
* Managing stakeholder expectations, risks, scope, and dependencies
* Mentoring and coaching senior and mid-level engineers and consultants
* Supporting pre-sales and solution design, including PoCs and technical proposals
* Identifying follow-on and net-new opportunities within existing client engagements
* Shaping internal engineering standards, delivery practices, and capabilities
* Contributing to practice development and representing the organisation internally and externally
What Were Looking For
Youre a senior technologist with strong consulting instincts and the confidence to lead in complex environments.
You bring:
* 10+ years of experience across software engineering, architecture, and operations
* Deep experience delivering multi-cloud and hybrid solutions at enterprise scale
* Strong hands-on background with cloud-native and distributed systems
* Proven application of DevOps / DevSecOps / SRE practices
* Experience designing data-centric and event-driven architectures
* Ability to translate complex business needs into practical, high-quality technical solutions
* Excellent stakeholder management and facilitation skills
* Calm, pragmatic leadership style — especially under pressure or ambiguity
* Strong analytical, root-cause analysis, and structured thinking skills
* Passion for continuous learning and emerging technologies
Bonus experience:
* MLOps and AI-enabled systems (e.g. RAG, agent frameworks, guardrails)
* Public speaking, internal enablement, or conference presentations
Qualifications (Nice to Have)
* Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, or similar
* Vendor certifications (AWS, Azure, GCP, Red Hat, IBM, etc.)
How Success Is Measured
Youll be successful if you:
* Deliver reliable, secure, and scalable solutions that create long-term client value
* Are recognised as a trusted advisor by clients and delivery teams
* Lead high-quality outcomes while balancing risk, value, and commercial impact
* Strengthen internal practices, standards, and technical capability
* Uphold strong delivery governance and quality controls
* Receive consistently strong feedback from clients and peers
Why Join?
* Work on high-impact, complex client challenges
* Operate at the intersection of technology, strategy, and delivery
* Influence architecture, standards, and engineering culture
* Collaborate with competent engineers and consultants
* Long-term focus on quality, trust, and sustainable outcomes