Software Engineer | 4-month contract

About Leidos Australia

At Leidos Australia, our work goes beyond a job title. We design, build, operate and support the systems, services and capabilities that help protect and advance the Australian way of life.

Backed by a global organisation of more than 40,000 people, our Australian team of around 2,000 has partnered with government, defence and national security customers for more than 30 years. We deliver mission-critical solutions where reliability, trust and purpose matter.

Leidos is a destination for people who want their work to have purpose, their contribution to be recognised, and their career to grow without needing to fit a single mould. Meaningful work is supported by benefits, flexibility and career pathways that help you grow while balancing life outside work. This includes:

• Flex Your Way – Tailor work to your life with options including Life Days (up to 12 extra days off per year), part-time arrangements, job sharing, and compressed hours.
• Wellbeing That Matters – Free access to Headspace and MeQuilibrium, plus dedicated wellness spaces to support your mental, physical, and emotional wellbeing.
• Learn Without Limits – Access over 120,000 on-demand courses, alongside technical, project management, leadership, and professional development opportunities.
• Work That Makes an Impact – Contribute to nationally significant projects that matter, solve complex challenges, and accelerate your career through unique growth opportunities.
• Build Your Future – Whether you're deepening technical expertise or preparing for leadership, we'll invest in your development every step of the way.
• And Much More – These are just a few of the ways we invest in our people and help them thrive.

About the Team

You’ll join a team where people work with integrity, inclusion, innovation, agility, collaboration and commitment. In practice, that means sharing ownership, solving complex problems together and staying connected to the customer context, the purpose behind the work and how each role contributes to meaningful outcomes.

The Opportunity

Join a collaborative engineering environment where you will help build and operate enterprise monitoring and observability solutions using the Elastic Stack. Working alongside senior engineers and architects, you will contribute to solutions that improve system visibility, incident investigation and operational resilience across applications, infrastructure, databases and cloud environments.

• Develop and maintain monitoring configurations and integrations that collect logs, metrics, traces and events from enterprise systems.
• Build and enhance Kibana dashboards, visualisations, alerts and reports that support proactive monitoring, performance analysis and operational decision-making.
• Create scripts and automation that streamline monitoring deployment, configuration management and recurring operational activities.
• Use observability data to support troubleshooting and root-cause analysis, while contributing to technical documentation, engineering reviews and continuous improvements in monitoring coverage and alert quality.

About You

You are developing your software engineering capability and are interested in using monitoring and observability technologies to solve practical operational challenges. You can work collaboratively across engineering and operational teams, investigate technical issues methodically, and communicate your findings clearly.

Essential:

• Knowledge of software engineering principles, scripting and system integration concepts.
• Experience developing or maintaining scripts and automation using Python, PowerShell, JavaScript or a comparable language.
• Understanding of operating systems, networking, virtual machines, containers or cloud services.
• Awareness of relational or non-relational databases and foundational database performance concepts.
• Ability to analyse system behaviour, investigate technical issues and contribute to resolution activities.
• Ability to collaborate with software engineers, platform teams, database administrators and operational stakeholders.
• Clear written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to contribute to technical documentation and knowledge sharing.
• Awareness of security, compliance and operational resilience in enterprise environments.

Advantageous:

• Exposure to Elasticsearch, Kibana, Logstash, Beats, Elastic Agent or another observability platform.
• Experience with Linux or Windows administration and databases such as SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MySQL or MongoDB.
• Familiarity with Azure, AWS or Google Cloud, and container technologies such as Docker or Kubernetes.
• Knowledge of Git, CI/CD pipelines, Terraform, Ansible, Prometheus, Grafana, Dynatrace, Splunk or AppDynamics.

This role requires the successful applicant to be an Australian citizen and hold an NV-1 security clearance.

If this role interests you, we encourage you to apply. We value different experiences and are interested in the capability and potential you could bring.

What to Expect When You Apply

Our hiring process is designed to be straightforward, respectful and easy to navigate. If your skills, experience and qualifications look aligned with the role, our Talent Acquisition team will contact you to discuss the next stage. You can expect:

• An initial conversation with our Talent Acquisition team
• An interview with the hiring manager or interview panel
• Any role-specific assessment, technical discussion or customer step required for the position

We’ll let you know what to expect before each stage, including who you’ll meet and how to prepare. If you need any adjustments or support during the process, please let us know.

Ready to explore what’s possible?

If this sounds like a role where you can make an impact and continue to grow, we’d like to hear from you. Please apply via the “Apply Now” button with your resume. If you have any questions about the role or recruitment process, please contact Praveena Sundarakumar, Talent Acquisition.

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo — because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 — and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.