Work with cutting edge technology, making the world a safer and more secure place. DroneShield (ASX:DRO) offers an opportunity to solve some of the world’s most challenging technical problems in Electronic Warfare, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, RF sensing, Sensor Fusion and distributed systems. Working with high profile customers across militaries, government agencies, airports, critical infrastructure, law enforcement and many others.

With one of the largest listed defence company market capitalisations in Australia and having raised approximately $250m in 2024 alone, DroneShield is undergoing hypergrowth stage, fuelled by rapidly increasing use of drones for nefarious applications, from battlefield, to terrorism, to contraband delivery and commercial espionage.

This role is in the DroneShield Sydney headquarters in Sydney CBD. There are approximately 320 staff based in the 4,000sqm facility today, scheduled to grow to approximately 400 staff by end of 2025. Overseas on the ground presence includes USA, Denmark, Mexico, and UAE, as well as distributors in over 70 countries globally. 

About the role

We are looking for an Infrastructure Engineer with experience operating Kubernetes at scale, CICD and automation of internal ML and Data Engineering applications, to join our growing infrastructure team. In this role, you will work on managing and expanding our globally distributed Kubernetes infrastructure running on bare-metal Linux across multiple data centres.

You will work at the forefront of high-performance infrastructure, supporting petabyte-scale systems and enabling advanced MLOps capabilities. This includes contributing to MLops Pipelines, data engineering, system resilience, and the integration of machine learning services.

You’ll report to the AI Infrastructure Lead and work closely with senior engineers across the infrastructure and AI platform teams.

Responsibilities, Duties and Expectations 

• Contribute to the architecture, implementation, and operations of a multi-node, distributed Kubernetes cluster.
• Assist in building and scaling the physical infrastructure of our on-premises systems, including GPU worker banks, storage arrays, and compute nodes.
• Collaborate with the team to build and continuously improve MLOps infrastructure and tooling.
• Solve complex problems involving distributed systems, high-volume data processing, and real-time service integration.
• Maintain and optimise hybrid infrastructure environments spanning on-premises and cloud systems.

Qualifications, Experience and Skills 

• Degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or similar technical field, or equivalent experience.
• 5+ years’ experience as an infrastructure or platforms engineer, or SRE, or equivalent technical role in production environments.
• Experience with Kubernetes, including operating clusters on Linux. CKA/CKS certifications highly desirable.
• Advanced knowledge of Linux internals, including L1/L2 networking, system performance, process monitoring, and shell scripting. Experience with server assembly and hardware integration is also desirable.
• Familiarity with CI/CD automation, ideally using GitLab.
• Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC).
• Familiarity with configuration management tools like Ansible, Puppet, or Chef.
• Solid understanding of networking and security principles

Who You Are

• A systems thinker with a deep understanding of scalable infrastructure.
• Passionate about automation, performance, and reliability.
• Comfortable working with both development and operations teams to bridge technical gaps.
• Curious, self-motivated, and always looking for ways to improve systems and practices.
• Excited by working on infrastructure at the intersection of AI, defence, and distributed systems.

Note for recruitment agencies: We do not accept unsolicited candidates from external recruiters unless specifically instructed.