Systems Engineer, Route 53

G'day! You've found an opportunity that could define your next chapter. Applicants must be Australian citizens and hold or be eligible to obtain an Australian Government Security Clearance with the ability to successfully complete an Organisational Suitability Assessment. More information regarding security clearances can be found at https://www.agsva.gov.au/. The Mission - Why This Program, Why Now? You're joining at the defining moment of one of the most significant technology programmes Australia has ever undertaken. This programme will build and operate the dedicated cloud giving Australia's national security community and its allies the capability to see more, share more, innovate and act faster than ever before. The architectural decisions being made now - how we structure networking, implement security controls, and automate at scale - will shape how Australia's national security community operates for the next decade. You won't be inheriting someone else's design choices. You'll be making them. Your Opportunity Picture yourself at the intersection of sovereign cloud innovation and one of the world's most critical DNS infrastructures. As a Systems Engineer within our Region Services team, you'll be redefining how AWS designs, builds, and operates cloud regions — enabling new infrastructure and services offerings that serve customers across every industry, from ambitious start-ups to the public sector organisations safeguarding our nation. Route 53 isn't just another DNS service — it's the nervous system of the internet operating across 50+ global locations with a 100% availability SLA. You'll be engineering latency-based routing, Private DNS architectures, Geo DNS solutions, and failover mechanisms that millions depend on without ever knowing your name. The distributed systems you'll build here are among the largest and most complex on the planet, and the challenges waiting for you are the kind that make exceptional engineers come alive. Whether you choose Melbourne or Sydney as your home base, you'll join a team of adaptable, passionate engineers who thrive on complexity and refuse to accept "good enough." Your technical expertise and development abilities will drive innovation that echoes far beyond a single service — you'll be shaping how Australia's sovereign cloud capability operates for a generation. Key job responsibilities You'll own the full engineering lifecycle of Route 53's DNS infrastructure within this programme — and that means your fingerprints will be on everything from initial architecture through to operational excellence at scale. Your core mission is designing and implementing DNS solutions that leverage Route 53's advanced capabilities: latency-based routing that shaves milliseconds off critical queries, Private DNS configurations that enable secure service discovery, Geo DNS routing that directs traffic with surgical precision, and failover architectures that ensure zero downtime when it matters most. You'll write production-quality code daily. Whether it's building automation frameworks that accelerate change propagation, developing monitoring systems that surface anomalies before they become incidents, or creating tooling that multiplies your team's effectiveness — your development skills are as essential as your systems expertise. Integration is where you'll truly shine. You'll connect Route 53 with the broader AWS ecosystem, collaborating across teams to ensure seamless interoperability between services. You'll participate in architectural reviews, challenge assumptions constructively, and propose solutions that balance innovation with the reliability this programme demands. Operational excellence runs through everything you do. You'll build and refine runbooks, lead incident response with calm expertise, conduct root-cause analyses that prevent recurrence, and continuously raise the bar for system reliability. You'll mentor teammates, share knowledge generously, and help build a