--- title: 'Forward-Deployed AI Engineer, Justice and Community Safety at Maincode' canonical: 'https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-ai-engineer-justice-and-community-safety-maincode-melbourne-72q4z3ny2v3d' type: 'job' last_seen: '2026-09-11' --- # Forward-Deployed AI Engineer, Justice and Community Safety at Maincode - **Company:** Maincode - **Location:** Melbourne, Australia - **Employment:** full-time - **Work type:** onsite - **Posted:** 2026-09-07 - **Last confirmed live:** 2026-09-11 - **Apply:** https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/maincode/086f2289-046b-4c6c-93c5-ffcaed88d4bc ## Job description ## About Maincode Maincode makes Matilda, an Australian-made AI stack we own end to end, from tin to token. We own and operate our own infrastructure here in Australia, we train and maintain our own frontier models, and we run multiple surfaces on top of them, including chat, coding and API. Everything we ship is built on capability we control ourselves. We are hiring someone who cares about that. You should be passionate about Australian-made AI, a builder first, and keen to work directly with customers to help them move forward on the Matilda stack. ## The Role You will be Maincode's senior technical presence with customers in Melbourne, including departments across the Justice and Community Safety (JACS) portfolio. This is a forward-deployed engineering role. You will embed with customer teams, get to grips with their hardest data problems, and design, adapt and deploy the Matilda stack to solve them. You will be the technical face of Maincode in the Justice and Emergency Services (J&ES) community: credible in a room of senior technical staff, able to prototype in days, and rigorous enough to ship working systems into classified environments. ## What You Will Do - Embed with Victorian J&ES customers to find where Matilda can deliver real mission outcomes, and turn loosely defined requirements into concrete technical plans. - Design, fine-tune, evaluate and deploy systems on the Matilda stack against customer data, including in on-premises, air-gapped and classified environments. - Own delivery end to end, from data pipelines and fine-tuning through retrieval-augmented generation, evaluation, MLOps and hardening to relevant Government security standards. - Brief confidently at every level, from working engineers through to executives, and write architecture papers and evaluation reports that stand up to scrutiny. - Bring what you learn in the field back to the team that trains the models, so customer experience directly shapes the next version of the stack. ## What You Will Bring Essential - Must hold an active AGSVA NV1 (or higher) security clearance and be willing to undergo Victoria Police organizational suitability vetting. - Deep hands-on experience in data science and ML engineering, with strong Python, modern ML stacks such as PyTorch, JAX and the Hugging Face ecosystem, and solid software engineering fundamentals. - Demonstrated experience deploying ML systems in secure government, defence or intelligence environments, including on-premises and air-gapped infrastructure. - Working knowledge of the Victorian Protective Data Security Framework (VPDSF), the ISM, the Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF), and data classification and handling requirements. - Excellent judgement and discretion, and the ability to operate autonomously inside customer environments. - The ability to explain complex ML concepts crisply, and to write exceptionally well. Highly Regarded - Prior experience within State Law Enforcement, Public Safety, or Federal Intelligence (e.g., VicPol, ASIO, ASD, or Defence S&T), ideally in a data science, technical, or analytic role. - Hands-on experience with large language models: fine-tuning, evaluation, retrieval-augmented generation, and their known failure modes. - Familiarity with intelligence-adjacent data workflows such as entity resolution, geospatial analysis, OSINT, graph analytics, or tradecraft tooling. - Solutions architecture or technical pre-sales experience in a commercial setting. Eligibility This position requires an active AGSVA NV1 (or higher) clearance. Due to clearance eligibility requirements, applicants must be Australian citizens. You will be required to consent to AGSVA revalidation, and to obtain and maintain customer-specific briefings and accesses as required. Details - Location: Melbourne, VIC. Regular work from customer facilities and secure sites, with some work from Maincode offices. - Type: Full-time, permanent. - Remuneration: Negotiable based on experience, plus super and equity. Who Thrives Here Builders who want to spend time with customers, and customer people who actually build. If you care about Australian-made AI and you would rather spend your week deploying systems with agencies than talking about them, you will do well here. ## About Maincode ## Company Overview - **One-liner**: Maincode is an Australian AI research and product company building Matilda, an intelligent assistant that understands context, learns your workflow, and helps you move faster and more safely. - **Entity Type**: Private (Bootstrapped – no external funding rounds disclosed) - **Headquarters**: Melbourne, Australia - **Founded**: Not publicly disclosed (recent high-growth signals suggest founding around 2024–2025) - **Founders**: Not publicly disclosed (Dave L. is listed as Chief Coder; founder status unclear) ## Core Business - **Primary industries**: AI research, applied intelligence, product development for enterprise and knowledge workers. - **Target customers**: B2B (teams and individuals needing a nuanced, safe AI assistant), researchers, and developers. - **Mission**: “AI that earns trust in the real world, to move humans forward.” Focus on safe, transparent, and helpful AI systems. ## Products & Services - **Matilda** (flagship product, private beta 2026): AI assistant with deep contextual understanding across long conversations, multi-step reasoning (inspectable steps), proactive but permission-asking behavior, learning of user workflows over time. Built and hosted in Australia, aligned with Australian privacy standards. - **Maincoder** (open-source 1B parameter model, released Dec 2025): Code generation and transformation model optimized for low latency and cost. - **AI Research Residency** (3–6 month paid program): For late-stage PhD students and early-career researchers. Provides access to Maincode’s GPU cluster, infrastructure, and direct collaboration with the core team; aims to publish at top-tier venues. - **Inference infrastructure (MC-2 cluster)**: High‑availability, sub-200ms global latency inference using custom batching, model sharding, dynamic routing (CUDA, Kubernetes, Terraform, GCP, vLLM, AMD Instinct GPUs). - **Context Engine & Action Layer**: Proprietary frameworks for long-context reasoning and agentic tool-use/sandboxed execution (turning Matilda from chatbot to agent). - **Eval Suite**: Internal evaluation framework for model capability, safety alignment, task completion (10K+ scenarios, automated regression). ## Market Standing - **Valuation / Market Cap**: Not disclosed. - **Key Metric**: Total funding not disclosed (appears bootstrapped). Headcount: 17 employees (+360% YoY). Monthly website visits: ~14,071 (+116.3% monthly, +56,184% yearly). - **Notable Investors/Partners**: - Demonstrating first agentic payment transaction in Australia with **Mastercard** at the Australian Open 2026. - Benchmarking study with **Heidi Health** (cloud vs on‑premise inference). - **Growth Signals**: - 10 active job postings (quarterly increase +42.9%, yearly +150%). - LinkedIn followers: 4,468 (+315.6% yearly). - Traffic growth (56,184% yearly) and strong inbound interest from US (72%) and Australia (28%). - Partnership with Mastercard for a live agentic payment demo signals enterprise traction. ## Competitive Advantages - **Australian privacy by design**: Infrastructure and model behaviour aligned with Australian standards; transparency and user control emphasized. - **Research‑to‑production pipeline**: Tight integration between frontier research and a shipped product (Matilda). The research residency directly feeds into product improvements. - **Agentic safety**: Multi-step reasoning with visible steps, permission‑asking before action, and sandboxed execution – differentiating from black‑box chatbots. - **Own GPU hardware**: MC-2 cluster (AMD Instinct) allows full control over inference latency and cost. - **Talent magnet**: Small, high‑agency team attracts PhD‑level researchers with promise of publications and access to SOTA compute. ## Strategic Focus - Scale Matilda’s user base (currently private beta) and move toward general availability. - Deepen research in safety & alignment, long‑context reasoning, multimodal perception, agent orchestration, and model efficiency. - Expand enterprise partnerships (evidenced by Mastercard, Heidi Health). - Continue growing the team across engineering and research (10 open roles across infrastructure, product, and research). ## Why Work Here - **Culture**: “Small team doing hard things.” High ownership, move fast, ship without permission. Values: ownership, gradient (fast learning), range, speed, taste, humility. No ego, mission‑first. - **Work environment**: On‑site in Melbourne, Australia (some hybrid/remote possible with visits). Emphasis on craft and shipping. - **Research perks**: For researchers – paid residency, ability to publish at top venues (NeurIPS, etc.), access to dedicated GPU cluster, direct line to production. - **Engineering focus**: Modern tech stack (Python, PyTorch, CUDA, Kubernetes, Terraform, GCP); engineers work on inference infrastructure, model training, safety evals, and product features. - **Growth opportunity**: From 17 people to planned expansion; early employees can shape the direction of the product and research agenda. ## Sources 1. [maincode.com](https://maincode.com/) – Company website, product description, culture page 2. [LinkedIn – Maincode](https://au.linkedin.com/company/maincodehq) – Headcount, growth metrics, partner announcements 3. [Built In – Maincode Careers](https://builtin.com/company/maincode) – Culture summary and active job listings 4. [AI Directory – Maincode Pty Ltd](https://aidirectory.industry.gov.au/organisation/maincode-pty-ltd) – Business area and location verification 5. [maincode.com/platform](https://maincode.com/platform) – Detailed product and research area descriptions ## Other roles at Maincode - [Talent Sourcer](https://feeny.ai/job/talent-sourcer-maincode-melbourne-1y96x7ezwa0f) — Melbourne, Australia - [Psychology Researcher, Talent](https://feeny.ai/job/psychology-researcher-talent-maincode-melbourne-a14qj2zc6b6c) — Melbourne, Australia - [Marketing Lead](https://feeny.ai/job/marketing-lead-maincode-melbourne-ejevmh3kfx3n) — Melbourne, Australia - [Forward-Deployed AI Engineer, Government and National Security](https://feeny.ai/job/forward-deployed-ai-engineer-government-and-national-security-maincode-canberra-hxax53shgchj) — Canberra, Australia - [Junior Commercial Counsel (AI & Technology)](https://feeny.ai/job/junior-commercial-counsel-ai-technology-maincode-melbourne-axbjnskc6y8h) — Melbourne, Australia - [Talent Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/talent-engineer-maincode-australia-kcyvhegegmtk) — Australia - [Software Engineer](https://feeny.ai/job/software-engineer-maincode-seattle-8wcyg274fjcr) — Seattle, WA - [AI Research Resident](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-research-resident-maincode-australia-ketgdbs6fjy8) — Australia - [Research Engineer – Matilda](https://feeny.ai/job/research-engineer-matilda-maincode-melbourne-37p38pkx99xk) — Melbourne, Australia - [AI Software Engineer (Back End)](https://feeny.ai/job/ai-software-engineer-back-end-maincode-melbourne-nffdzzvrsdqk) — Melbourne, Australia