Senior Systems Engineer

Every day, millions of Australians connect, work, stream, and stay in touch on the Optus network. When it works seamlessly, it’s easy to take for granted. But behind it is a team making thousands of decisions every day - decisions that keep people, businesses and communities connected.

Right now, Optus is focused on getting the fundamentals right - simplifying how we work, lifting standards, and building a more reliable, resilient experience for our customers.

It’s not about surface-level change. It’s about how we make decisions, how we work together, and how we deliver.

As a Senior Systems Engineer, you will design, develop, integrate, operate, and continuously improve the regulatory systems that support Optus’ compliance obligations and reputation. This is a hands-on technical role for a coder at heart, combining full-stack engineering, data science, systems architecture, integration, installation of hardware, routing, firewalls, and operational support across the technology stack.

The role is expected to combine deep hands-on technical expertise with broad systems thinking, practical problem solving, and a strong commitment to continuous learning and operational excellence.

The Day to Day

• Design, build and optimise regulatory data platforms, supporting data ingestion, processing, automation, search and analytics capabilities.
• Develop and maintain applications, APIs, integrations and services across infrastructure, network, data and application environments.
• Lead the delivery and support of regulatory systems, including troubleshooting complex issues, performance optimisation and continual improvement initiatives.
• Collaborate with internal teams, vendors and delivery partners to deliver secure, reliable and scalable technology solutions.
• Engage with government agencies and key stakeholders while ensuring compliance, security, confidentiality and effective management of sensitive regulatory systems.

What You Bring

• Must hold, or be eligible to obtain, an Australian Government security clearance, requiring Australian citizenship and a minimum of 10 years' residency in Australia.
• At least 5 years' experience in software development, with a track record of delivering and supporting production applications and services.
• Expert-level Linux systems engineering and administration, including design, build, hardening, automation and operational support in on-premises environments.
• Expert-level Python application development, including testing, maintainability, performance and production support; experience with Django and FastAPI is preferred.
• Experience with Elasticsearch, PostgreSQL, Redis, RabbitMQ and MongoDB, including integration, performance tuning and operational considerations.
• Strong experience in systems design, architecture, APIs, integrations, automation and data platforms, delivering secure, scalable and production-ready solutions.
• Experience in secure application development and security-by-design, including secure coding, testing, access control, auditability and vulnerability remediation.
• Proven ability to own services through design, delivery and operation: troubleshoot complex issues, optimise performance, improve observability, lead incident response and drive continual improvement.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills, with the ability to influence without formal authority across vendors, all Optus business units, cross-functional teams and government agencies in regulated and classified environments.
• Sound understanding of security, regulatory compliance, risk management and the secure handling of sensitive and classified information.
• Commitment to continuous learning and team uplift through knowledge sharing, documentation, mentoring, reusable patterns and improved engineering practices.

The good stuff

• Competitive remuneration and colleague discounts. Make life easier (and more affordable) with $80 monthly credit and 25% off Optus products and outstanding shopping discounts with our retail partners.
• Flexible working arrangements with opportunities to work three days in the office, two days remote or home.
• Vibrant and collaborative office campus that includes cafes, convenience store, chill out zones, GP, post office, gym, and on-site childcare centre.
• Competitive leave policies, including additional 'Connected’ days to focus on culture, family, health, community, or whatever’s important to you.
• We support growing families with inclusive, carer-neutral paid Parental Leave of up to 16 weeks.
• Build meaningful connections through colleague-led networks and diversity initiatives including Culture Connect, Elevate Women, Disability Network, and Express Yourself (LGBTQIA+).
• Put your wellbeing first with free access to counselling and support services, 24/7 — in-person, by phone, SMS, or video.
• Free Optus bus from Macquarie University Metro Station (every 6-8 minutes); morning and afternoon. Join us for an outstanding career opportunity!

Not every box ticked? Apply anyway. We believe the right mindset matters more than a perfect CV. We’ll back you to grow from there.

At Optus, we are strengthened by others and that means valuing diversity and saying ‘yes’ to embracing individual differences. We are committed to ensuring that our application process provides an equal employment opportunity to all job seekers, including individuals from diverse gender, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, individuals with a disability, individuals identifying as being part of the LGBTQIA+ community, individuals who may have served in the armed forces or who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. We also want to do our best to make our recruitment process inclusive. If you require any adjustments or accessibility support to participate fairly and equitably in the recruitment process, please email [email protected] or call 1800 309 170.

For more information on Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Optus, please visit