Senior Java Developer

Application closing date: Monday, 16 November 2026 • 11:59pm, Canberra time

Estimated start date: Monday, 11 January 2027

Location of work: SA

Working arrangements:Full-time onsite for the first 2 weeks. A hybrid WFH arrangement, usually a minimum of 2 days per week onsite, will be considered from the location of their capital city.

Length of contract: 12 months

Contract extensions: Up to a maximum of 24 months

Security clearance: Must have an active Negative Vetting 1 clearance

Rates: $100 - $130 per hour (inc. super)
Services Australia is at the frontline of government service delivery, supporting millions of Australians, and is front and centre of a vision to be a world leader in government service delivery. It’s using cutting-edge technology to build world class platforms and capabilities to help Australians get on with their lives.

The Java Developer will have experience overseeing software development projects, writing optimised code, and provide technical leadership to a team of software engineers. They are responsible for the quality and functionality of the software produced by their team.

Java Developers will work with the Senior Capacity Manager(s), Capacity Planning Services team and Service Management & Self-Healing Automation Project delivery stakeholders to analyse, design, build, test and support COMPASS CMIS enhancements required for the CPU Right-Sizing and related capacity management automation outcomes.

The role will provide specialist development capability to extend the COMPASS application, data collectors, database interfaces, database design, dashboards and reporting capability so that utilisation data can be collected,aggregated, analysed and presented for operational decision-making.

Key duties and responsibilities:

• Develop, enhance and maintain COMPASS Java application components, including collectors, APIs, processing logic and interfaces required to support capacity data ingestion and analysis.
• Implement and test capacity data collection methods across priority platforms, including integration of data feeds from monitoring tools, configuration repositories and platform data sources.
• Support the design and build of data aggregation, transformation and storage patterns within COMPASS and PostgreSQL database to enable reliable reporting and forecasting.
• Contribute to Grafana dashboard and report development by preparing data structures, queries, extracts and supporting application functions required for right-sizing analysis.
• Develop and maintain technical documentation, task cards, implementation notes and knowledge transfer material to support APS capability uplift and ongoing COMPASS sustainment.
• Assist with defect investigation, root cause analysis, remediation and release support across development, pre-production and production environments.
• Support the Service Management & Self-Healing Automation Project outcomes by enabling CPU Right-Sizing, automated capacity reporting, improved data quality, platform coverage expansion and operational self-service reporting.

Qualifications and Experience required:

• Knowledge of technology domain frameworks, legislation, policies and procedures
• Understanding of relevant business systems and tools
• Strong communication and negotiation skills
• Professional presentation skills

Technical skills required:

• Experience integrating monitoring, capacity or observability data from tools such as Grafana,Elastic, Prometheus, VMware Aria, Dynatrace or equivalent data repositories.
• Ability to develop and support automation scripts, data collectors, scheduled jobs and repeatable deployment or operational processes.
• Ability to work with capacity planners, platform teams, database administrators, Linux engineers, project delivery teams and business stakeholders to confirm requirements and validate outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to document technical designs, support arrangements, implementation steps and knowledge transfer material to enable sustainable handover.
• Strong Java development experience, including application support, API integration, data processing and troubleshooting in enterprise environments.
• Experience with PostgreSQL or other relational databases, SQL query development, data modelling, materialised views, indexing, performance tuning and data quality controls.
• Practical knowledge of Linux, Windows Server, Tomcat, JDK/JRE, Maven, Git/GitLab and deployment practices across development, test and production environments.

Essential criteria

1. Emerging technology monitoring Level 5 (SFIA): Monitors the external environment to gather intelligence on emerging technologies. Assesses and documents the impacts, threats and opportunities to the organisation. Creates reports and technology roadmaps and shares knowledge and insights with others.
2. Methods and tools Level 5 (SFIA): Provides advice, guidance and expertise to promote adoption of methods and tools and adherence to policies and standards. Evaluates and selects appropriate methods and tools in line with agreed policies and standards. Contributes to organisational policies, standards, and guidelines for methods and tools. Implements methods and tools at programme, project and team levels including selection and tailoring in line with agreed standards. Manages reviews of the benefits and value of methods and tools. Identifies and recommends improvements.
3. Programming/software development Level 5 (SFIA): Takes technical responsibility across all stages and iterations of software development. Plans and drives software construction activities. Adopts and adapts appropriate software development methods, tools and techniques. Measures and monitors applications of project/team standards for software construction, including software security. Contributes to the development of organisational policies, standards, and guidelines for software development.
4. Release and deployment Level 5 (SFIA): Leads the assessment, analysis, planning and design of release packages, including assessment of risk. Liaises with business and technology teams on release scheduling and communication of progress. Conducts post-release reviews. Ensures that release processes and procedures are applied and that releases can be rolled back as needed. Identifies, evaluates and manages the adoption of appropriate release and deployment techniques, processes and automation tools.
5. Software configuration Level 5 (SFIA): Takes technical responsibility across all stages and iterations of configuration development and deployment. Plans and drives software configuration activities. Adopts and adapts appropriate software configuration methods, tools and techniques. Measures and monitors the application of standards for configuration design and deployment including software security. Contributes to the development of organisational policies, standards, and guidelines for software configuration design and deployment.
6. Software design: Level 4 (SFIA): Designs complex software applications, components and modules. Uses appropriate modelling techniques following agreed software design standards, guidelines, patterns and methodology. Creates and communicates multiple design views to balance stakeholders' concerns and to satisfy functional and non-functional requirements. Identifies, evaluates and recommends alternative design options and trade-offs. Models, simulates or prototypes the behaviour of proposed software to enable approval by stakeholders, and effective construction of the software. Verifies software design by constructing and applying appropriate methods. Reviews, verifies and improves own designs against specifications. Leads reviews of others designs.
7. Specialist advice: Level 4 (SFIA): Provides detailed and specific advice regarding the application of their specialism to the organisation's planning and operations. Actively maintains knowledge in one or more identifiable specialisms. Recognises and identifies the boundaries of their own specialist knowledge. Where appropriate, collaborates with other specialists to ensure advice given is appropriate to the organisation's needs.
8. Systems design: Level 5 (SFIA): Designs large or complex systems and undertakes impact analysis on major design options and trade-offs. Ensures that the system design balances functional and non-functional requirements. Reviews systems designs and ensures that appropriate methods, tools and techniques are applied effectively. Makes recommendations and assesses and manages associated risks. Adopts and adapts system design methods, tools and techniques. Contributes to development of system design policies, standards and selection of architecture components.
9. Systems integration and build Level 5 (SFIA): Plans and drives activities to develop organisational systems integration and build capabilities including automation and continuous integration. Identifies, evaluates and manages the adoption of tools, techniques and processes to create a robust integration framework. Provides authoritative advice and guidance on any aspect of systems integration. Leads integration work in line with the agreed system and service design. Assesses risks and takes preventative action. Measures and monitors applications of standards. Contributes to the development of organisational policies, standards, and guidelines for systems integration.
10. Testing Level 4 (SFIA): Selects appropriate testing approach, including manual and automated testing. Develops and executes test plans and test cases. Implements scalable and reliable automated tests and frameworks. Collaborates across parties involved in product, systems or service design and development to enable comprehensive test coverage. Identifies improvements in requirements, design or specification processes to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of testing. Analyses and reports on test activities, results, issues and risks, including the work of others.

HOW TO APPLY

Please provide an updated CV (a maximum of 3-5 pages) to reflect your suitability to the role based on the job description. You will also need to complete responses to the essential and desirable criteria which is no more than 5000 characters for each response. Your application will be reviewed based on ability to demonstrate, or potential to develop, the capabilities required.