Applied AI Engineer

Date:
30 Jun 2026

Location:
Melbourne, VIC, AU

Department:
Strategy, Risk & Transactions

Description:
Job Requisition ID: 41430

Flexible work arrangements - work in a way that suits you best

World-class learning and leadership programs

Salary packaging - to suit your personal and financial circumstances

Applied AI Engineers are the technical backbone of Optimal Reality engagements. Your primary output is developing AI-powered solutions for our clients using our OR architecture and AI skill library. You’ll be working with clients in asset-intensive industries such as transport, energy, technology, defence and emergency management to build solutions that connect the physical and digital world. You work directly alongside clients and specialists to deliver end-to-end solutions, and you're equally comfortable designing a skill interface, debugging a data pipeline, and running a technical workshop with a client's engineering team.

What will your typical day look like?

You will work on genuinely hard problems — resource allocation under fire, real-time fleet coordination, autonomous infrastructure — for clients where the decisions carry real consequences. This is not a role where you consume someone else's framework. You build the solutions directly for clients using our underlying AI frameworks and technologies, and the quality of what you ship determines the speed and reliability of every engagement that follows.

Core responsibilities across all levels:
Author and maintain AI solutions based on OR platform capabilities — making data pipelines, model operations, and operator interfaces composable and reusable across engagements

Design skill interfaces, system prompts, and tool definitions that are precise, testable, and safe to deploy in high-stakes operational environments

Write test harnesses and evaluation scenarios that validate skill behaviour against real client data before deployment

Build directly on the OR architecture where existing skills don't cover a client's requirements — and convert that work into reusable skills for the library

Deploy and manage model containers; maintain CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure-as-code that support the skill delivery stack

Work closely with Applied AI Specialists — translating prototypes built from skills into production-grade, client-operated systems

Contribute to skill library quality: versioning, documentation, peer review, and deprecation standards

About the team

Our Australian team draws on hands-on industry expertise and extensive experience from some of the world's largest operations and asset intensive projects. The team enables clients to set up, build and run projects with greater confidence in the results. We bring our clients this confidence through our focussed offerings, driving improved performance across transformation and operations through the application of digital technologies, business intelligence and analytics and support to project development, delivery, commissioning, operations and management.

Enough about us, let’s talk about you.

Requirements across all levels:
Strong full-stack capability: Python or TypeScript backend, modern frontend (React or equivalent), REST and WebSocket APIs

Hands-on experience with LLM-based tooling including prompt design, tool use, and agent patterns

Experience with data pipelines, telemetry, or time-series data — IoT, sensor networks, SCADA, or similar as well as modelling and simulation technologies

Comfortable with containerisation (Docker) and Kubernetes-based deployments

Able to work directly with clients: articulate technical trade-offs, explain skill limitations, and adapt to ambiguous operational requirements

Operates with ownership — you finish things, flag problems early, and don't wait to be told what's next

Additional expectations at Senior level:
Track record of leading technical delivery on complex, multi-system engagements

Demonstrable skill design rigour: can write system prompts, tool schemas, and evaluation suites that hold up under adversarial or edge-case inputs

Able to produce clear architecture documentation and drive technical alignment across a cross-functional team

Experience in regulated or high-reliability environments (defence, utilities, transport, or critical infrastructure preferred)

Additional expectations at Lead level:
Deep experience in AI/ML systems, simulation, physics-based modelling, or autonomy stacks

Has designed and governed a shared skill or component library at scale — you understand the discipline of reusable AI asset management

Demonstrated ability to build and grow an engineering team

Comfortable operating as a technical peer with senior client engineers and architects

Nice to Have (any level)

Familiarity with simulation, digital twins, physics-grounded modelling, or computer vision

Experience with edge inference or embedded systems

Security clearance or eligibility, or prior work in defence or intelligence environments

Exposure to AI agent evaluation frameworks, red-teaming, or adversarial prompt testing

Experience building MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers or tool integrations for LLM agents

Why Deloitte?

At Deloitte, we focus our energy on interesting and impactful work. We’re always learning, innovating and setting the standard; making a positive difference to our clients and our society. We put coaching at the heart of what we do, helping our people grow their careers in any direction – whether it be up, moving into something new, or even moving across the world.

We embrace diversity, equity and inclusion. We have a diverse collection of people from different backgrounds, with different experiences, gender identities, abilities and thinking styles. What binds us together is a shared commitment to value everyone’s perspective and to cultivate inclusion; so that our work environment is a safe space we can all belong.

We prioritise flexibility and choice. At Deloitte, you get trust on Day 1. We know our people get their best work done when they’re in control of where and how they work, designing their work week around their client, team and personal commitments.

We help you live and work well. To support your personal and professional life, we offer a range of perks and benefits, including retail discounts, wellbeing leave, paid volunteering days, twelve flexible working options, market-leading parental leave and return to work support package.