AI Mission Engineer Lead

ARQ, Dialog, CatapultBI, ICEMEDIA, Eighty20, Riley and AccessHQ are now all part of NCS Australia.

About us:

We are NCS Australia! We have brought together Australia’s best tech talent, working as one to harness technology and advance our communities, to make the extraordinary happen.

We're proud of our rich history of partnering with our clients to develop end to end digital technology solutions to accelerate their transformation and innovation journey. For over 40+ years our diverse global teams have delivered large-scale, mission-critical, multi-platform projects to governments and enterprises.

AI is moving from the art of the possible to the science of the operational. Our clients — across regulated industries and enterprise — don't need another proof of concept. They need engineers who can embed inside their operations, learn the work, and ship agentic AI systems that hold up in production.

The AI Mission Engineer — FDE Lead is the senior practitioner who sets the bar for how NCS Australia delivers forward-deployed AI work. You will run the hardest engagements yourself, build the playbook others follow, and grow a small team of mission engineers behind you. You sit at the intersection of client mission, platform engineering, and agentic AI — and you are accountable for outcomes, not artefacts.

This is a hands-on leadership role. You will still be in the code, in the workshop, in the war room. You will also be shaping how we hire, how we deliver, and how we partner with product engineering globally.

You will be responsible for leading client engagements end-to-end by embedding with customer teams, understanding real workflows, and translating complex business challenges into deployable AI solutions. You will establish and scale the agentic AI delivery practice at NCS Australia by defining architectures, reusable components, and delivery patterns. You will build and lead a high-performing team of mission engineers, providing technical direction, mentorship, and oversight, while driving rapid prototyping and production deployment of AI solutions integrated with enterprise systems. Additionally, you will influence product and platform roadmaps through insights gathered from client engagements and act as a trusted advisor to senior stakeholders, ensuring responsible, secure, and effective AI adoption in regulated environments.

• Strong experience in engineering or solution-engineering roles, with at least 3 years in forward-deployed, embedded, or similar client-facing technical delivery
• Demonstrable track record shipping production AI/ML systems — agentic workflows, RAG, orchestration, evaluation — not just prototypes
• Strong full-stack chops: Python and TypeScript/JavaScript; comfortable across backend services, data pipelines, and lightweight UI (Next.js, React, or similar)
• Deep experience integrating with enterprise systems — Microsoft O365, Databricks, Snowflake, Palantir Foundry, ServiceNow, Atlassian, or equivalents
• Experience evaluating AI system performance — building evals, interpreting results, making the trade-off calls that matter in production
• Proven ability to lead small senior teams and grow capability without losing technical depth
• Excellent communication across technical and non-technical stakeholders — including comfort in front of executives
• Demonstrated ability to operate autonomously in ambiguous, high-stakes environments

Nice to have

• Experience in regulated environments (financial services, telco, government, healthcare) and familiarity with sovereignty, security, and audit requirements
• Familiarity with agentic frameworks (LangGraph, AutoGen, CrewAI, or equivalent) and workflow/automation platforms (n8n, Foundry, Power Automate)
• Background in product telemetry, usage analytics, or feedback-driven iteration
• Experience operating in early-stage or high-growth environments — building the plane while flying it

Why join us: 

NCS Australia is where you can feel at home, nurturing your talents and skills as we make tomorrow together, one day at a time. Our benefits include paid parental leave, initiatives focused on your well-being and discounted health insurance. You will also enjoy discounts on various products and services and be regularly recognised and rewarded for high performance. We are committed to your career development through our Capability Fingerprint, industry and partner training programs, special interest groups, and an AI-driven learning platform. No matter where you are in your career, we offer meaningful work and opportunities for growth.

NCS Australia is an equal-opportunity employer, and we take pride in our commitment to valuing and supporting our people and the communities we serve.We are dedicated to attracting, retaining and developing our people regardless of gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and age. Applications are encouraged from all sectors of the community and we strongly encourage applications from the Veterans, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander community.

At NCS Australia, we are committed to supporting adjustments throughout the recruitment and selection process, as well as during employment. We actively support and encourage people with disability to apply. 

Agencies:

We’ve got this. We request that you do not contact NCS employees outside of the Talent Acquisition team. NCS exclusively accepts resumes from agencies on our preferred supplier panel through the NCS Agency Portal. Agencies that submit resumes must have a valid fee agreement and be assigned to the particular requisition by the Talent Acquisition team. Any resumes that are submitted outside of this process will become the sole property of NCS. If a candidate is hired outside of this process, no fee or payment will be given.

Work rights and background checks: 

To be eligible for a position with us, applicants will need to have valid work rights for Australia and be willing to undergo a comprehensive background checking process, including probity and police checks

Why join us: 

NCS Australia is where you can feel at home, nurturing your talents and skills as we make tomorrow together, one day at a time. Our benefits include paid parental leave, initiatives focused on your well-being and discounted health insurance. You will also enjoy discounts on various products and services and be regularly recognised and rewarded for high performance. We are committed to your career development through our Capability Fingerprint, industry and partner training programs, special interest groups, and an AI-driven learning platform. No matter where you are in your career, we offer meaningful work and opportunities for growth.

NCS Australia is an equal-opportunity employer, and we take pride in our commitment to valuing and supporting our people and the communities we serve.We are dedicated to attracting, retaining and developing our people regardless of gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability and age. Applications are encouraged from all sectors of the community and we strongly encourage applications from the Veterans, Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander community.

At NCS Australia, we are committed to supporting adjustments throughout the recruitment and selection process, as well as during employment. We actively support and encourage people with disability to apply. 

Agencies:

We’ve got this. We request that you do not contact NCS employees outside of the Talent Acquisition team. NCS exclusively accepts resumes from agencies on our preferred supplier panel through the NCS Agency Portal. Agencies that submit resumes must have a valid fee agreement and be assigned to the particular requisition by the Talent Acquisition team. Any resumes that are submitted outside of this process will become the sole property of NCS. If a candidate is hired outside of this process, no fee or payment will be given.

Work rights and background checks: 

To be eligible for a position with us, applicants will need to have valid work rights for Australia and be willing to undergo a comprehensive background checking process, including probity and police checks