Lead Telescope Operations Engineer - SKA-Low Telescope
The SKA Observatory (SKAO) is delivering one of the world's most ambitious scientific projects, constructing the largest and most advanced radio telescopes ever built. In Australia, the SKA-Low telescope is being developed in partnership with CSIRO and will enable transformational science for decades to come, helping answer some of the biggest questions about our Universe.
The SKA-Low Engineering Operations team is responsible for ensuring the ongoing performance, reliability and availability of the telescope throughout its operational lifecycle. Working closely with engineers, scientists, technical specialists and operational teams across Australia and the international SKAO community, the team supports the operation, maintenance and continuous improvement of a highly complex scientific facility.
As the Lead Telescope Operations Engineer, you will provide strategic technical leadership for the operation and performance of the world's largest low-frequency radio telescope. You will lead a team of specialist engineers, oversee the investigation and resolution of complex technical issues, and play a key role in maintaining and optimising the telescope's analogue and digital signal chain. Acting as the senior operational engineering escalation point, you will guide multidisciplinary investigations, support major incident response activities, and drive initiatives that improve telescope performance, reliability and scientific outcomes.
You will bring significant experience leading multidisciplinary engineering teams and operations within a complex technical, scientific, industrial or infrastructure environment. You will have strong systems thinking, engineering judgement and experience across areas such as reliability, safety assurance, risk management and operational performance. You will also be a confident communicator who can influence across disciplines, lead technical teams through challenging problems, and apply sound engineering judgement to balance operational priorities, technical risks and long-term system performance. Experience in radio astronomy, observatory operations or another mission-critical engineering environment will be highly regarded.
If you are an accomplished engineering leader looking for the opportunity to work at the forefront of radio astronomy and contribute to the operation of one of the world’s most ambitious scientific facilities, this is an exciting opportunity to make a lasting impact – and we would love to hear from you!
Your high-level duties will include:
- Providing authoritative technical leadership for the operational performance, reliability, availability, maintainability and continuous improvement of the SKA-Low telescope and its supporting systems, ensuring the Observatory consistently delivers world-class scientific outcomes.
- Serving as the senior engineering authority for telescope operations, maintaining a comprehensive systems-level understanding of the end-to-end telescope signal chain and supporting infrastructure, and applying expert judgement to resolve highly complex, novel and multidisciplinary challenges.
- Acting as the highest operational engineering escalation point for major incidents, performance degradations and systemic issues, leading technical response activities, directing investigations across engineering disciplines, and driving timely resolution to minimise operational impact.
- Providing strategic oversight of observatory performance, identifying opportunities to optimise reliability, availability, maintainability and operational efficiency, and translating these into sustainable engineering and operational improvements.
- Leading engineering assurance and operational risk management activities, ensuring technical risks are appropriately identified, assessed, mitigated and communicated to support informed operational and organisational decision-making.
- Influencing the technical direction and operational readiness of telescope systems, providing expert input to system design, integration, commissioning, upgrades and lifecycle management activities to ensure operational requirements and long-term maintainability are achieved.
- Leading, mentoring and developing a high-performing Telescope Operations Engineering team, fostering technical excellence, accountability, collaboration and continuous learning across multidisciplinary and geographically dispersed teams.
- Building and maintaining effective relationships with internal and external stakeholders, including Observatory Operations, Engineering, Science Operations, projects, contractors and industry partners, to align priorities and achieve operational objectives.
