SYSTEMS & AI OPERATIONS LEAD

Who are we?

IDEAcademy is a three-year alternative education program for 14–18 year olds, replacing Years 10–12. We operate across Perth and Fremantle, with over 200 learners and 20 staff. Our learners are emerging young professionals; not students, not employees, not children.

The program is delivered through masterclasses (not lessons), facilitated by Experience Leads (not teachers), in a workspace (not a classroom). Vocational credentials are delivered through our RTO, Nua Learn (RTO Code: 46284).

As we mature operationally we are bringing technology in-house. This is a foundational hire - you will be IDEA's first dedicated technology professional, with the scope to shape how systems support the program.

Are you our next Systems & AI Operations Lead?

You are a generalist with depth. You hold a working mental model of the systems you administer and you can explain how data moves between them without looking it up. You write down what you change. You finish things. You notice the small thing that’s wrong before it becomes the big thing that’s wrong.

You take initiative because you have to. There is no senior technology colleague here to escalate to internally - that’s the role you are being hired into. You are comfortable with that and you know how to ask for help externally (vendors, communities, the documentation) when you need it.

You use AI tools - Claude, ChatGPT, or whatever fits the task - as part of your daily work. Not as a novelty, not under protest, but because they make you faster and more accurate. You can already feel the shift toward AI-orchestrated operations and you want to be the person standing it up at IDEA, not the person catching up to it.

You may be a systems admin or systems engineer who’s been the sole or primary IT owner at a small organisation and is ready for more scope. You may be a technical operations lead from an adjacent sector who’s been quietly building automation and AI tooling at the edges of your role. You may be a tier-2/3 support engineer or a junior IT lead from an MSP who is ready to step into a single-owner role with real ownership and real growth runway.

You live our team values

These mean specific things at IDEA. Read them in that spirit.

• Care Deeply. You care about the work being right, not just done. You document because the next person (or future-you) deserves to find the answer in writing. The young people we serve are mostly teenagers and half are neurodivergent - the systems we run for them have to actually work, not work-most-of-the-time.

• Mission to Mastery. You get better at the craft. You read the docs before you ask the question. You learn from the incident in writing so the team gets stronger. You don’t bluff.

• Adaptable. You take initiative - this organisation is small and there is no manual for what we’re building. You change course when the evidence says you should. You are willing to learn from failure, pivot, and try again.

Your role

You will take ownership of IDEA's technology and learning systems - the infrastructure layer, the LMS and student-management platforms, and the operational side of our internal AI-augmented curriculum pipeline. You will report directly to one of IDEA’s co-founders and work closely with the operations team, the Community & Growth function, and the Experience Leads delivering the program.

The role is operational and forward-leaning at the same time. You will run the things that already exist and help build the AI Operations Platform we are standing up across our verticals.

A small but technically rich environment: Microsoft 365 with Intune and Defender for Business, two campuses on UniFi, Canvas LMS at the centre of learning delivery, Compass for attendance and parent comms, Axcelerate for RTO compliance, plus a Python-based internal pipeline that automates curriculum publishing into Canvas (you will administer the environment it runs in; you will not be expected to write the pipeline code at first, but should be comfortable reading it and growing into operational ownership over time).

We currently use an external technology service provider for parts of the backend. You will manage that relationship in 2026, with the explicit objective of building the capability to internalise the work over time. Pace and sequence are yours to recommend.

Key responsibilities

1 Data Integration & Automation Complete the integration of IDEA’s technology stack. Design and operate the data-flow and automation layer across Canvas, Compass, Axcelerate, Enquiry Tracker, the internal pipeline, and any new systems we adopt - for both user experience (no double-entry, no reconciliation by hand, learners and staff seeing consistent data wherever they look) and compliance (clean AVETMISS reporting, auditable data lineage, defensible records for the RTO). Identify and close the gaps where systems don’t yet speak to each other. APIs, webhooks, MCP integrations and middleware are all on the table; the right answer is whichever one is most maintainable for a team our size.

2 AI Operations Platform Help orchestrate the development of IDEA’s AI Operations Platform - a structured, repo-based approach to how AI agents (Claude, in our case) operate inside our systems with traceability. This includes contributing to the vertical-repo standard, helping each function (Growth, Finance, Staff Experience, Technology, Curriculum, Compliance) bootstrap its own repo, and surfacing the discovery question case-by-case: “can Claude operate inside this system directly via API or MCP integration, or do we describe it from outside?” The vision in this domain sits with the co-founders. You will be the key integrator who makes the vision land in working systems.

3 Learning & Operational Systems Administer Canvas LMS - course shells, enrolment, permissions, support escalation, improving user experience. Administer Compass and Axcelerate (including AVETMISS reporting). Coordinate with the curriculum operators who use the internal Python pipeline.

4 Documentation Build and maintain the runbooks, SOPs, and architecture documentation ID will rely on as it scales. Maintain a current map of systems, integrations, and data flows. This is not the last item on the list because it’s least important - it’s the work that compounds every other item.

The following responsibility areas are currently externally supported; building in-house capability over time is part of the role.

5 Microsoft 365 & Identity. Administer the M365 tenant - Entra ID, Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams, OneDrive. Manage Intune device enrolment, configuration profiles, app deployment, and compliance policies. Operate Defender for Business - endpoint protection, threat investigation, alert triage. Own the identity lifecycle (provisioning, role assignments, secure offboarding). Maintain conditional access and MFA enforcement across the tenant.

6 End-User Support & Onboarding. First point of contact for staff IT. Onboard new staff devices via Intune / Autopilot. Secure offboarding of departing staff. Maintain the asset register including the leased fleet. Run periodic security awareness training and phishing simulations.

7 Vendor & Procurement. Manage relationships with Microsoft (CSP), Lenovo, Grenke (leasing), Adobe, and the external technology service provider noted above. Source hardware and licensing competitively. Negotiate renewals.

8 Network & Infrastructure. Maintain UniFi networking at both campuses - switches, access points, gateways, VLAN segmentation. Manage internet connectivity and ISP relationships. Maintain printers, AV, and other shared-use devices. Operate backup and disaster recovery for M365 data and on-prem assets.

9 Security & Compliance. Maintain a current threat model and security posture. Operate patch management and vulnerability response. Support privacy and data-handling compliance under the Australian Privacy Act, with particular care for learner data. Coordinate incident response when needed.

Why us?

• Genuine ownership. You are the first dedicated technology hire. You are building IT and AI Operations capability from scratch, not maintaining someone else’s. Your decisions shape how IDEA operates for years.

• Mission-driven work. IDEA serves young people for whom mainstream schooling has not worked - particularly neurodivergent learners. The systems you build directly support that.

• Hybrid working. Time across both campuses, with home-work flexibility for the work that doesn’t need to be onsite. Specific arrangement agreed on appointment.

• AI-fluent organisation. You will not have to argue the case for using AI tools in your work. We expect it. The CEO uses Claude daily and the wider team is being onboarded to AI-augmented workflows across functions. You will be in the room shaping how that scales technically.

Selection criteria

1. Single-owner experience. Demonstrated experience as the sole or primary IT / systems owner for an organisation, even a small one. You have held end-to-end accountability for at least one technology environment.

2. Microsoft 365 administration. Working knowledge of M365 administration including Entra ID, Intune, Exchange Online, SharePoint, and Defender for Business.

3. Networking fundamentals. Solid grounding in TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VLANs, and firewalls, with practical experience administering an SMB network - UniFi, Meraki, or equivalent.

4. Security posture. Fluency with patch management, MFA, endpoint hardening, and basic incident response. Able to explain trade-offs to non-technical stakeholders without simplifying away the substance.

5. AI fluency in daily work. Demonstrated, actual use of AI tools (Claude, ChatGPT, or similar) in your day-to-day technical work - scripting, troubleshooting, documentation, log review, automation. Treats AI as a core tool, not a novelty.

6. Scripting and automation. Comfortable writing and reading PowerShell, Python, or bash. You are not expected to be a developer. You are expected to write small scripts, read other people’s scripts, and use AI to accelerate that work.

7. Documentation discipline. Strong writing skills. Plain, structured, accessible documentation is part of the deliverable, not an afterthought.

8. Self-direction. Comfortable operating with ambiguity, prioritising your own work, and asking for help when you need it. This role does not have a senior IT colleague to escalate to internally.

9. Mission alignment. Genuine understanding of, and care for, neurodivergent and alternative-pathway learners and the organisations that serve them.

Highly desirable (signal, not requirement)

• Tenant-level AI tooling experience - enterprise Claude, AI policy and governance.

• LMS admin - Canvas (preferred), Moodle, Blackboard, or comparable.

• Australian RTO administration tools; Axcelerate, VETtrak, or comparable AVETMISS-compatible systems.

• Compass School Manager or equivalent.

• Microsoft Cloud Solution Provider (CSP) relationship experience.

• Familiarity with the Australian Privacy Act and basic education-sector compliance obligations.

• Education sector background - secondary, VET, RTO, or higher ed.

We are not looking for

• Someone who needs a large team of technical peers to do their best work. This is a single-owner role with cross-functional support, not a senior position inside a larger IT team.

• Someone whose strongest skill is one specialist area only. We need a generalist with depth.

• Someone who prefers ticket queues and rigid process over building things from scratch.

• Someone who is sceptical of AI as a working tool. It is part of how we operate, & we expect the Systems & AI Operations Lead to model that for the team.

To apply

Your interview will assess your suitability against the Selection Criteria.

Please submit:

• Your CV including at least one referee.

• A short cover note describing a piece of infrastructure or a system you have built, broken, or fixed that you are proud of and what you learned from it. Real examples are essential. One page is plenty.

Submissions and enquiries to Rebecca Loftus at *******@ideacademy.com.au by 5pm AWST on Friday 26 June 2026.