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Saab Global
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Graduate program

As a part of Saab Australia's Graduate Program, you will have the opportunity to contribute to your own personalised development initiatives, and kick-start your career.

Explore your potential

At Saab Australia, we’re pioneering Australia’s defence capability with ongoing development of advanced defence and security technologies. Saab develops everything from combat, communications and security systems, to mixed reality and cyber security solutions.

What does our program involve?

Saab’s Graduate Program is a two-year program, which offers you the opportunity to undertake either a program aimed at developing technical depth within one area, or a program with structured rotations across two teams in the business. These options are individually tailored to your current skills and developmental needs, business requirements and individual preferences.


Following the successful completion of the program, we will place you into a permanent position within the business so that you can continue the growth of your exciting new career.


Our 2024 Graduate Program will be comprised of the following graduate roles, predominantly located at our Adelaide office, with select roles also available from our Melbourne or Perth offices (noted below):

  • Software Engineering: within our surface ship Combat Management System, Submarine Automation System, OneView Security System and Autonomous Systems product teams.
  • System Engineering: design of OneView Security System installations and Combat Systems for the Royal Australian Navy’s surface fleet, including detailed design of mechanical, electrical and system security. The combat systems roles may also be based from our Melbourne or Perth offices.
  • Electrical Engineering: focusing on the design of electrical/electronic solutions for our surface ship Combat Management System, Submarine systems and Autonomous Systems within the Defence domain.
  • Mechanical Engineering: focusing on the design of mechanical/mechatronic solutions for our surface ship Combat Management System, Submarine systems, Autonomous Systems and Ground Based Air Defence & Radar (GBADR) systems. The GBADR role may also be based from our Melbourne office.
  • Modelling & Analysis of surface ship Combat System solutions and Autonomous Systems solutions within the Defence domain
  • Integrated Logistics Support Engineering: of surface ship Combat System solutions and Autonomous systems within the Defence domain.
  • Infrastructure Engineering: Implementation of servers, workstations, network design and security subsystem installation for Saab’s OneView Security System.
  • Project Management: providing support to project management, contract administration and subcontractor management tasking for both our surface ship Combat System and OneView Security System programs
  • Cyber security: consulting and engineering supporting Saab’s business areas, products and external clients
  • Human Resources: supporting our HR operations, talent acquisition and learning & development functions.
  • Finance: supporting our accounts payable and receivable, payroll and project accounting functions.
  • Legal / Commercial: supporting our Maritime project teams with legal and export control advice.

Our graduates are also provided the opportunity to participate in professional development and mentoring activities including; the Re-Engineering Foundation Subs in Schools Program, Australia-wide Careers Fairs and Events, as well as the mentoring of future Saab graduates.

What support will you receive?

In addition to the day-to-day support you will receive from your supervisors and team, you will also be provided with trained and experienced mentors from within the business and access to the Saab Australia Graduate School.

The Saab Australia Graduate School comprises regular lessons that cover the overarching topics such as knowing your personal brand, developing your business acumen and advancing your technical skills.

 

Inventory in Tannefors-Linköping

Who do we look for?

We are searching for talented and inquisitive problem-solvers, who are interested in designing and developing products that will help to keep people and society safe. We seek well-rounded engineering graduates in the following disciplines:

  • Software Engineering/Computer Science
  • Computer Systems/Networking/IT
  • Electrical/Electronics Engineering
  • Mechanical/Mechatronics Engineering
  • Physics/Mathematics/Science
  • Construction Management
  • Business Systems
  • Human Resources
  • Finance/Accounting
  • Law /Commercial /Business
  • Or a related discipline

 

To work at Saab you must comply with defence industry security requirements (i.e. you will be an Australian citizen and able to meet eligibility requirements).

 

Applications open in March each year, apply below

Adelaide HQ

Human Resources

Visit our careers listing around March each year to lodge an application for our Graduate Program

Hear from our graduates

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Tell us a little about your role at Saab

‘My role in the Integration team is to build and configure the backend servers and network infrastructure for OneView to operate on. We spend a lot of time tweaking configurations to meet redundancy and availability requirements, as well as to integrate with a growing list of subsystems – from CCTV to door access control and perimeter detection systems.

The coolest thing about my job is that I get involved in a large scope of the process, starting at pulling servers freshly out of the box.

My focus started with setting up for Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT) in the office. It has since shifted to flying in and out of sites such as the new Clarence Correctional Centre, in Grafton NSW. This will be Australia’s largest correctional centre, housing up to 1700 inmates, and is nearing the final stages of construction. An exciting place to have worked on.’

What is some advice you would have like to tell students?

  • Work hard, both inside and outside of university. This will set you up well when it comes time for applying for jobs and being able to easily answer interview questions.
  • Look for opportunities and get to know companies at careers events, Ingenuity and when companies come to present at the university.
  • Have fun and enjoy what you do. Once I changed degrees I was much happier and doing well got a whole lot easier.

Day in the life of a Graduate Engineer

7:15am

"I am usually one of the first people to arrive at work. Our hours are flexible and I prefer to start and finish early most days."

7:30am

"The first thing I do each day is check my emails. I see I have a reminder about mandatory training, a few emails from members of my team informing everyone about changes they've made, and a meeting request for lunch with the other grads in my cohort."

7:45am

"Time to get stuck into my tasks. We're able to pick which tasks we might like to do from the dashboard available tasks, then have a chat with our team leader who then assigns them." 

8am

"Currently, I'm working on a coding task to improve our Configuration Tool, which will ultimately save us a lot of time configuring large, nation-wide sites in the future. We write our code using C# in Visual Studio, in the Windows environment. Some tasks involve some work in xaml, xml or sql databases as well."

9:45am

"It's time for a stand up meeting with my team. Today is a regular team meeting day, and we get together to discuss what we're all working on and any problems we're having. This is good opportinuty to bounce ideas around and find the right help."

10am

"I take a break from coding and work on some grad school homework. It's a great opportunity for further learning, where our company puts on fortnightly sessions for all the first-year grads."

12:30pm

"After lunch, I look into a problem we are having with one of our sites. Our movement tracking system just isn't starting up correctly. We have a test lab set up for this particular site, so I head in there to see if I can replicate the problem. I can, which means we can work on solving it a lot more easily than if we were just providing remote support to the engineers on site."

2pm

"I decide to go for a walk along Dry Creek to clear my head, there were even some Rainbow Lorikeets along the way!"

2:15pm

"I haven't spoken to my mentor for a while so I set up a meeting for next week. My mentor is in the cyber security department and is full of interesting stories and tips, and even though I'm quite settled now, I still like to meet with him to stay connected. After this, I get back to my coding tasks."

4pm

"Off the clock now and ready for sport. Once a week we have an organised inner-company sporting match. This is in our own time but is a great way to get to know more people and run around."

5pm

"Tennis isn't my strong point and I lost most of my matched, but it was good fun! Time to head home now and take the dog for a walk before settling in for the night."

AU staff
AU staff

Megan studied a Bachelor of Mathematical and Computer Sciences, Applied Mathematics at the University of Adelaide and is now a Graduate Engineer at Saab Australia.