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05 / Discipline - Specialist Search

Cloud Engineering

Platform, infrastructure, DevOps and SRE - engineers who keep your environment fast, stable and cheap to run.

What We Place

The roles we run, by level.

  • Senior Platform & Infrastructure Engineers
  • Site Reliability & DevOps Engineers
  • Heads of Infra / Platform Engineering Leads
  • Founding Platform hires for early-stage scaleups
  • Cloud Architects (multi-cloud, regulated)
  • Stack: AWS, GCP, Azure, Kubernetes, Terraform, Pulumi

Where The Talent Sits

The pools we actually source from.

  • Hyperscaler ANZ practices (AWS, GCP, Azure, Cloudflare)
  • Big-tech infra alumni (Atlassian, Canva, Twilio)
  • Specialist consultancies (Mantel Group, Stax, Cevo)
  • Banking and ASX-listed platform engineering teams
  • Founding-platform alumni from successful Australian exits

Geographies

Sydney and Melbourne primary. Remote-Australia common. Brisbane and Adelaide for specialist hires.

Comp Bands (2026)

Senior IC: $190k - $290k base. Platform Leads: $250k - $370k base. Heads of Infra: $320k+ base + bonus + equity.

Median Brief - Signed

21 days. 90% of mandates filled in ≤3 CVs.

How We Run The Search

Four steps. Twenty-one days.

01

Brief

90 minute working session. Scorecard signed off before any outreach.

02

Search

Direct outreach across APAC, EMEA and US. 200-400 named engineers per mandate.

03

Shortlist

3-5 calibrated candidates, each with a one-page technical memo.

04

Close

Pre-closed comp, counter-offer coaching, replacement guarantee.

Recent Cloud Searches

Indicative of where we run.

Indicative samples drawn from recent and active mandates. Specific clients available under NDA on request.

Further reading

Related insights.

Salary

What Senior DevOps Engineers Expect in 2026

Market Signals

Tech Hiring in Australia: Q1 2026 Monthly Snapshot

Hiring Process

What a Structured Intake Call Should Actually Cover

Common questions

Frequently asked.

What cloud engineering roles do you specialise in?

Platform engineers, SREs, DevOps engineers, cloud architects, infrastructure engineers and heads of platform. AWS, GCP and Azure are all in scope; multi-cloud experience is increasingly common.

Do you have specific expertise in AWS, GCP or Azure?

Our network spans all three major clouds. AWS placements are the most frequent in Australia, but we have placed senior GCP and Azure specialists for both AI-native and enterprise teams.

Can you place SREs separately from DevOps?

Yes. SRE (with strong programming and incident-response orientation) and DevOps (with delivery-pipeline and developer-experience orientation) are distinct profiles. Our intake calls calibrate which is needed.

What salary bands are typical for senior platform engineers?

Senior platform, SRE and DevOps base sits at AUD 170-210k in Sydney for 2026, base only, 25th-75th percentile of accepted offers. Principal platform engineers reach AUD 190-220k.

Do you cover internal developer platform (IDP) and developer experience roles?

Yes. Platform engineering teams investing in internal developer platforms, golden paths and developer experience tooling are a significant share of recent cloud placements. IDP experience is the strongest single premium signal in this discipline for 2026.

What tooling experience moves a platform engineer up the band?

Kubernetes at production scale is table stakes. GitOps (ArgoCD, Flux) signals top-half-of-band. Shipped internal developer platforms and AI infrastructure (GPU scheduling, inference serving) are the two strongest premiums in 2026.

What do cloud and platform contractors charge in 2026?

Senior day rates run AUD 950-1,150 excluding GST in Sydney, with principal rates to AUD 1,300. Cleared platform engineers in defence-adjacent contexts run 15-25 per cent above.

How is AI infrastructure changing platform hiring?

GPU cluster management, inference serving and vector database operations are leaking into platform briefs. Engineers with this overlap increasingly price against ML engineering bands rather than platform bands - a 10-20 per cent uplift.

How long does a platform engineering search take?

21 days median from intake to signed offer. Briefs that conflate DevOps and SRE profiles typically run longer because shortlist calibration takes an extra cycle.

Submit a brief

Run a structured Cloud search.

30 minute working session. No fee until placement. Replacement inside 90 days.

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