Principal Infrastructure Architect

PanAust

Date: 10 hours ago

City: Brisbane, Queensland

Contract type: Full time

Be part of a growing mining company with a portfolio of international operations and projects
Drive reliability, security, and scalability across core infrastructure systems.
Work within the Corporate Office in the James Street precinct in a 3 Year Fixed Term position

PanAust Limited (“PanAust”) is an Australian-headquartered copper and gold producer in Laos, with pre-development and exploration assets in Laos, Papua New Guinea (PNG) and Chile. Reporting directly to the Group IT Manager, this is an opportunity to join PanAust during an exciting period of revitalising its development opportunity pipeline.

Our Assets

In Laos, PanAust’s subsidiary, Phu Bia Mining Limited, operates the Phu Kham Copper-Gold and Ban Houayxai Gold-Silver Operations. Both are world-class, award-winning operations with strong operational, safety and sustainability credentials.

In PNG, PanAust owns the Frieda River Copper-Gold Project, one of the world’s largest known undeveloped copper and gold deposits.The project will help supply the copper required to facilitate the renewable energy transition. Frieda River is a sustainable, nation-building project which includes the development of a hydropower facility and public use infrastructure that will advance one of the least developed regions in PNG.

In Chile, PanAust owns 100% of the Carmen copper gold project and 66% of the Inca de Oro copper gold project. Both are promising pre-development assets, which are being progressed by PanAust.

The Role

The Principal Infrastructure Architect plays a strategic, and technical leadership role, in designing and overseeing the implementation of robust, scalable, and secure IT and OT infrastructure across PanAust operations in Laos, PNG, Australia and Chile. This includes servers, storage, cloud platforms, networking, communications, and operational technologies.

The role, which is a 3 year fixed-term position, ensures alignment of infrastructure solutions with business goals, operational continuity, and industry best practices—particularly within the demanding, remote, and safety-critical contexts of mining operations.

Key Responsibilities

Develop and maintain the enterprise infrastructure architecture strategy and roadmap
Design hybrid cloud and on-premises solutions that support mining applications, including SCADA, fleet management, and ERP systems
Define reference architectures, technology standards, and integration patterns
Lead high-level solution design for infrastructure projects and technology refresh programs
Review and approve technical designs created by infrastructure engineers and vendors
Guide the adoption of emerging technologies such as edge computing and industrial IoT
Collaborate with project managers, business analysts, and technical team members to ensure infrastructure solutions meet functional and non-functional requirements
Translate business requirements into technical specifications and costed solution designs
Integrate cybersecurity, data protection, and compliance requirements into infrastructure designs (e.g. Essential 8, OT5, Mining-specific controls)
Ensure appropriate network segmentation and remote site resilience to reduce operational risk
Maintain architectural documentation, principles, and decision records
Evaluate infrastructure health and performance, identifying opportunities for standardization and cost optimization

To be successful in this role, you will require:

Minimum 10 years' experience in infrastructure or systems architecture roles
Relevant industry certifications (e.g., Cisco, VMware, Microsoft, AWS/Azure Architect)
Demonstrated experience designing complex IT/OT environments in industrial or mining settings
Strong knowledge of networking, storage, compute, and virtualization technologies
Proven experience with hybrid cloud environments (Azure, AWS) and edge computing
Sound understanding of cybersecurity principles and infrastructure risk management
Experience with mining systems (e.g. Jigsaw, GEOVIA, deswik, SAP)
Understanding of automation, telemetry, or industrial control systems
TOGAF or SABSA certification

Key Competencies

Strategic thinking and ability to align technology to business goals
Strong communication and documentation skills
Analytical and problem-solving mindset
Leadership in cross-functional technical teams
Vendor and stakeholder negotiation skills

You must have full Australian working rights to apply for this role.

Why Join Us?

Our Values: Our core values of Care, Leadership, Integrity and Performance and represent the foundations of our great culture.
Remuneration: We offer a competitive salary, bonus and benefits package.
Meaningful Work: The work we do is valuable and connects all of our employees through a shared vision and our values.
Sustainability: We actively focus on our environmental footprint and build upon community development initiatives in communities where we operate.

PanAust is focussed on building a workforce that embraces diversity and inclusion, aiming to create an environment that brings us all together through connection, security and community and harnessing what makes us unique. As an Equal Opportunity employer, we encourage and welcome applications from all genders, abilities, generations and cultural backgrounds.