Senior Full Stack Software Engineer

Australian citizenship required. No PR or Work Visa holders. Must be able to obtain Baseline security clearance.

Experience in federal government highly preferred. 

Location - Canberra only.

What to Submit

1. A tailored resume in docx format

2. A one page (5000 character) summary response to the selection criteria below.

RFQ Details

• RFQ ID: LH-05216

• Agency: Department of Home Affairs

• Closing Date: Tuesday, 09 December 2025 11:59pm (Canberra time)

• Estimated Start Date: Monday, 05 January 2026

• Initial Contract Duration: Contract to 30 June 2026

• Extension Term: 12 months

• Number of Extensions: 2

• Experience Level: Senior EL1 equivalent

• Security Clearance: Must be able to obtain Baseline

• Location of Work: ACT

• Working Arrangements:

  Full-time onsite for first 3 months or until familiar with ICT landscape. Flexibility may be considered afterwards per departmental operational needs and WFH guidelines.

  Minimum 3 days per week onsite.

  All remote work costs (travel, accommodation, utilities, equipment) are the contractors responsibility.

• Maximum Hours: 40 hours per week

Job Details

Software Engineers have experience overseeing software development projects, writing optimised code, and providing technical leadership to a team of software engineers. They are responsible for the quality and functionality of the software produced by their team.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

The Full Stack Senior Software Engineer will be responsible for providing the following deliverables including but not limited to:

• Providing technical design, development, implementation, and maintenance of large and complex Java and React applications

• Participating in the design and development of technical changes that meet business requirements while being aligned with Enterprise Architecture artefacts

• Developing, maintaining and unit testing system components

• Providing application development in line with Departmental standards and methodologies

• Providing coding, unit testing and maintaining complex J2EE applications and components

• Developing and maintaining system design documentation

• Undertaking database design and development

• Contributing to architectural issues

• Troubleshooting production issues and incidents

• Providing development effort estimates for changes to existing applications and new applications

• Providing Code Reviews and other Quality Assurance tasks for projects and for code delivered by the Section

• Providing status reports to Development Managers

• Working within small development teams

• Liaising with business analysts, testers and other stakeholders to efficiently deliver high quality work

• Managing defects including:

  • triaging defects to determine priorities and defect fix implementation

  • analysing and identifying the root causes contributing to incidents and problems

  
  

Specified Personnel must transfer skills and knowledge to departmental staff and ensure documentation is stored per recordkeeping policy.

Required Deliverables

• Java and React code

• Software specifications

• Integration interface specifications

• Software architecture designs

• Deployment plans

• Release notes

Technical Skills

• Experience and proficiency in designing and building React and Java applications

• Configuration of contemporary web servers

• Spring Boot framework

• SOAP and/or REST/JSON integration

• Relational databases

• AWS Lambda with Java

About the Team

The Threat Risk & Intervention Systems section manages several ICT solutions and projects supporting ABF risk assessment obligations.

Teams include APS, contractors, and vendor resources delivering and managing ICT solutions.

About the Project

This role supports the in-flight Border Risk Systems project used by ABF and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry.

Work includes designing and building front-end (React) and back-end (Java) systems, including multiple REST integrations.

About the Organisation

This role is critical to ensuring ABF and DAFF officers have sufficient ICT systems and tools to perform border risk assessments accurately.

Selection Criteria

Max 5000 characters total in one-page pitch (individual responses not required)

Essential Criteria

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.