Combine your love of travel with work
As a field services technician, no 2 days are the same. You'll travel far and wide in 4WDs, planes, boats and helicopters to look after our vast observing network.
This work takes you to some of Australia's most unique and isolated environments. You'll be one of 200 staff across 8 technical operations centres and remote weather stations.
Observing operations staff on a supply trip to Willis Island weather station, 450 km east of Cairns. Credit: Alex Cossu.
Technician jobs across Australia
Technicians maintain the service delivery of our observation network. This ranges from radars to flood and rainfall monitoring systems, to space weather instruments and more.
We employ qualified electronics, electrical or instrumentation technicians or engineers. You can also apply as a recent graduate or candidate with a few years of industry experience in:
- engineering trades
- hydrography
- applied science
- metrology
- measurement science.
We regularly recruit for roles across Australia. Our locations include Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney. Staff can also apply for temporary postings to Giles weather station, Willis Island, Antarctica and more.
Pausing to appreciate the view during a field maintenance trip in Queensland. Credit: Misty McCain.
Personal and professional requirements
We're looking for people who:
- have qualifications or work experience in electronics, instrumentation, engineering, hydrography, applied science, metrology or measurement science
- have an appetite for working in remote locations and a willingness to travel
- are team players who can get hands-on in the field
- take responsibility for managing projects and are able to balance competing priorities
- build productive working relationships and communicate with influence
- have a reasonable level of physical fitness.
The responsibilities of the role include but are not limited to:
- maintenance and operations
- asset and service management
- documentation and record keeping
- travel and incident response
- data quality
- liaison and representation
- quality management
- compliance
- workplace health and safety.
Our technician roles are advertised as technical officer jobs. Add your name to the talent register, and explore job descriptions and current opportunities on our BOM Careers website.
What it's like to work as a field services technician
Find out what Kyle and Darcy experienced as technical officers in the field.
I love working with my hands, working outdoors and problem solving. I started out doing a Bachelor of Science, but uni wasn't for me. After a conversation with an human resources manager about pathways into the Bureau, I changed to an 18-month Diploma of Electronics and Communications Engineering at TAFE.
I actually did work experience at the Bureau in Year 10, which kind of sowed the seed, I've had a passion for the weather for a long time!
After I got my diploma, I started out as a level 2 technical officer (TO2) in Melbourne. It was a temporary role, but while I was doing that an opportunity came up for an ongoing TO3 role, which I applied for and got. Now I'm back home in Adelaide, acting as a TO4. In just under 3 years I've had some pretty good opportunities.
The travel is something that I absolutely love, we get to visit places the general public don't tend to see. We go right out to remote Western Australia, the far north of South Australia. We get to see all the different landscapes, at different times of year. I also love knowing that I'm providing a good service not only for our main stakeholders, like aviation, defence and emergency services, but for the Australian public.
Kyle inspects a rain gauge at Tarlee in South Australia
Our primary job is to go out in the field and verify that all instruments are performing to World Meteorological Organization standards. There's no such thing really as a typical week. Some days it's quiet and everything's well behaved, and some weeks it's like everything is throwing a hissy fit!
Say an automatic weather station (AWS) goes down, we have to try and remote diagnose the issue. If it can't be done remotely, we organise a crew to head out with the correct components, book accommodation, get the car and head off to do the job.
I've had so many great trips, one of my favourite field trips so far was to Wilson's Promontory. I was due to head back to Adelaide, but I was lucky enough to get on the Prom trip, it's usually a bit of a fight to the death to get on that one! It was a routine 6-monthly verification, for a climate observations reference AWS. We visit those sites twice a year, doing performance checks and seeing if any sort of corrective maintenance is required.
When it comes to field work, you can have a day where everything just works perfectly and then some trips … you might have computer issues, connectivity issues, you might do something and then all of a sudden something down the line is knocked out. Having a problem-solving mindset is an important thing. But there's so much experience here, so much knowledge. Everyone is willing to share that information, especially with the new technicians.
So as long as you enjoy getting your hands dirty, being away from home and love a lot of travel, then it's definitely a good job! There are great benefits in as well. Really good allowances, great super, a flexible working environment and you're surrounded by people who share the same passion and are always willing to help you out.
I'm planning to make it a lifelong career. There are so many opportunities here, and you don't have to be a technical officer for the rest of your days. There are lots of temporary assignment duties, if you want to take on a different challenge or just have a change of scenery for 6 to 12 months.
For me, this is more of a passion than a job.
My background is marine biology and I was doing hydrographic work when this opportunity came up at the Bureau. I started out working on the flood warning network, it's very similar to the hydrographic work that I was doing at my previous state government job; water resource monitoring, looking after rain gauges and water level sites.
When you come into the Bureau as a technical officer, you have the opportunity to learn about all sorts of different equipment. They train you up in different areas, and that's been great because I've been exposed to heaps of different things, like learning about the sea level network. And because of that, in the 12 months I've been at the Bureau, I've been overseas 4 times!
The Adelaide Hub's Sea Level Network team look after the majority of the country's sea level sites and we also look after the sites in the South Pacific. So I've been to Nauru twice, Vanuatu and then I went to Tonga about 6 weeks ago as well.
Before you can go on a trip, even the local ones, you need to do a mandatory 3-week course at the Bureau of Meteorology Training Centre (BMTC) in Melbourne. It's an introductory course on automatic weather station systems, it covers basic electrical theory and then they teach you how to connect to the systems and do data verifications in the field.
Darcy says there's opportunity to learn about all sorts of different equipment, such as this weather station at Cawnalmurtee, New South Wales
In each hub, there’s a range of skillsets that complement each other. My background in hydrography means my strength is working on flood warning stations, and then we have people with in-depth electronic experience who work on radar systems. So they might send me along to a radar to help out and learn, but I'm not going to be the person that's expected to fault find or resolve a radar issue.
But if I'm going on a flood trip, I'll lead the trip and because of my past experience and BMTC training, I have a good understanding of the electronics with the flood network. If there's ever an issue that I can't fix, there's someone in the hub that I can call up to talk through it. I guess it's just about working as a team. You can't expect everyone to be an expert at everything.
I was in my last job for 6 years, with very little progression in that time. The Bureau's definitely heaps better in that regard, there are so many opportunities to progress your development, to do training courses, to act in higher roles. I loved my last job, but the ability to progress and to experience new opportunities wasn't there.
I'd say the biggest benefit though is lifestyle. I think the flexibility and the ability to shift your work around your life is second to none. This week we went to Mildura to fix some storm damage, 6 weeks ago I was in Tonga, and then next week I'll be in the Adelaide Hills fixing up rain gauges. It's a forever changing landscape, in a positive way. It's good for me at this stage of my life.
If you're thinking about applying for a job as a technical officer, do it for sure. I think it's an open door to a million other doors.