Data Engineer - VisionAI (AU)

Location: Sydney, Australia

Department: AI Software

About the role

DroneShield is seeking a Data Engineer (VisionAI) to join our development team in Sydney. In this role, you will be at the forefront of advancing our computer vision capabilities - managing large-scale image and video datasets, and building the data infrastructure and MLOps pipelines that power next-generation AI systems.

You’ll collaborate closely with engineers, data scientists, and product teams to ensure our datasets are reliable, scalable, and optimised for real-world defence and security applications. This position offers the opportunity to work on unique, mission-critical challenges where your contributions directly impact global security outcomes.

Responsibilities, Duties and Expectations 

• Design, build, and optimise robust data pipelines and databases to support end-to-end computer vision workflows — from ingestion and transformation to storage and retrieval
• Develop scalable data infrastructure and visualisation tools that ensure dataset quality and deliver actionable operational insights
• Work cross-functionally with data scientists, ML engineers, and software teams to enable rapid experimentation and deployment of AI-driven solutions
• Champion best practices in data quality, governance, and reproducibility, ensuring datasets meet the standards required for mission-critical defence technology
• Continuously innovate, identifying opportunities to automate processes, integrate new tools, and enhance MLOps efficiency

Qualifications, Experience and Skills 

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Data Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
• More than 3 years’ experience in data engineering, including working with unstructured data such as images or videos
• Proficiency in Python development, including computer vision libraries (e.g. OpenCV, Pillow, scikit-image)
• Experience designing, maintaining, querying and optimising relational databases (e.g. PostgreSQL, MySQL)
• Experience building and managing scalable ETL/ELT and/or MLOps pipelines (e.g. Apache Airflow, ClearML)
• Experience in exploratory data analysis (EDA) and building dashboards (e.g. FiftyOne, Pandas, Tableau, Power BI)
• Familiar with cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, GCP), version control system (Git), data versioning tools (e.g. DVC), and on-premises data management
• Knowledge of computer vision model evaluation and synthetic data generation techniques is favourable
• Exposure to Vision Language Models or generative AI for data preprocessing is favourable
• Previous ‘start-up’ or ‘scale-up’ experience is favourable
• Strong problem-solving skills, attention to data quality, and effective cross-team communication
• An abundance of ambition and motivation to grow the company and compete with the big players in the industry

Note for recruitment agencies: We do not accept unsolicited candidates from external recruiters unless specifically instructed.

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About the Company

Work with cutting edge AI technology, making the world a safer and more secure place. DroneShield (ASX:DRO) offers an opportunity to solve some of world’s most challenging technical problems in the rapidly growing counter-drone sector.   

Our customers operate in some of the most challenging and high-stakes environments in the world, including military organisations, government agencies, airports, critical infrastructure operators, and law enforcement. Protecting airspace in these settings requires technology that performs under pressure and teams that understand what’s at stake. At DroneShield, employees work at the leading edge of counter-drone innovation, helping to address real-world security challenges as drone threats continue to evolve globally. 

With one of the largest listed defence company market capitalisations in Australia, now part of the ASX200 index, DroneShield is experiencing a period of hypergrowth. Revenue has surged from A$57 million in 2024 to over A$190 million in 2025, representing growth of more than 400% year-on-year, with record profitability and cashflow. The total addressable global market for counter-drone is assessed at approximately $100 billion, and is currently at the nascent stage with much of the growth still to come, with DroneShield well positioned as a global market leader, and the only public listed pure-play business in this sector.   

The company has grown from 11 employees in 2017 to over 450 staff globally today, and is on track to reach around 550 by the end of 2026. This expansion includes investment of over A$50 million annually in R&D, a global pipeline exceeding A$2.5 billion, and continuous scaling of production capacity to meet accelerating demand.  

The role is based at DroneShield’s central Sydney headquarters. Overseas on-the-ground presence includes Virginia (USA), Netherlands, Denmark, Mexico and Dubai, as well as distributors in over 70 countries worldwide.