Top 10 Tech Apprenticeships, Internships and Entry-Level Jobs in Australia in 2026

Table of Contents

• Why this list matters
• Atlassian Graduate and Intern Program
• Canva Graduate and Intern Programs
• Telstra Graduate and Intern Programs
• CBA Technology Graduate Program
• Australian Government Digital Traineeship Program
• Google Australia Apprenticeships
• Microsoft LEAP Apprenticeship
• AWS re/Start Australia
• TAFE-Backed ICT Traineeships
• NAB Technology Talent Program (StarCamp)
• How to actually land one of these roles
• Frequently Asked Questions

Atlassian Graduate and Intern Program

Think of Atlassian as the Newtown terrace everyone lines up for first: a little intimidating from the street, but sitting right in the heart of the action. Born in Sydney and now global, it still anchors its engineering muscle in Australia, with offices woven into the Tech Central precinct and the broader Sydney-Melbourne tech corridor.

Who actually thrives here

This program suits final-year students and recent grads who already enjoy building things end to end: software engineering, SRE, data or ML. You’re joining a company whose grad and intern roles regularly feature among sought-after tech pathways on SEEK GradConnection’s IT internships listings, with compensation commonly reported around a $110k+ AUD package (salary + super) for grads and paid summer internships of roughly 12 weeks.

What the work and tech stack look like

You’re not building toy apps. From early on you ship production code into Jira, Confluence and newer platform services, working inside modern cloud-native stacks: microservices, CI/CD, infrastructure as code and observability.

• Implementing features that millions of engineers rely on daily
• Automating testing and deployment pipelines
• Working with data/ML-adjacent teams on analytics, recommendations or developer productivity tooling

Mentorship, outcomes and how hard it is to get in

Each grad has a dedicated mentor plus strong peer cohorts, and interns are treated as future hires, not cheap labour. Intern conversion is often described in forums as near-100% for strong performers, making the summer internship one of the most reliable bridges into a full-time role.

The flip side: competition is brutal. Treat Atlassian like a top-tier global grad scheme, with offer rates in the single-digit % range. To stand out, you’ll need more than grades: think a small SaaS tool deployed to the cloud, meaningful open-source contributions, or an applied-AI side project that uses Python, SQL and a major cloud platform to solve a real problem for a team or community.

Canva Graduate and Intern Programs

Canva feels like the Surry Hills sharehouse everyone secretly hopes to land: light-filled, chaotic in a good way, and plugged into the heart of Sydney’s product scene. From a single design tool to a global platform, it’s become a magnet for grads who care about both beautiful UX and serious engineering.

Why it pulls in AI-curious grads

If you like the idea of shipping features to millions of users, Canva’s squad model puts you in cross-functional teams blending engineering, data, design and product. Increasingly, those squads ship AI-powered features: think smart layout suggestions, generative content tools and recommendation systems woven into the editor. That combination of consumer UX and applied ML is exactly the kind of work many career advisers now flag as “future-proof” in Australian tech, alongside data and cybersecurity roles highlighted by Overseas Students Australia’s tech career guides.

Pay, structure and day-to-day work

Graduate packages are widely reported around $100k+ AUD, which places Canva among the highest-paying early-career options in the local market, with a structured 12-month grad program and roughly 12-week internships. You might be:

• Building front-end React components for the editor or design system
• Scaling back-end services handling image, video and template workloads
• Running A/B tests to improve activation, collaboration or revenue metrics
• Working with data scientists on ranking, recommendations or abuse detection

Mentorship, competition and how to stand out

Canva leans heavily into coaching-style mentorship: you join real product teams, get regular feedback from senior engineers and designers, and learn how decisions are made in a high-growth environment. Tech employers with strong support and learning cultures consistently rank well in STEM employer lists such as the Top 20 STEM Employers, and Canva often appears in the same conversations as Atlassian, CBA and the major banks.

Entry is fiercely competitive, with single-digit offer rates typical for well-qualified applicants. To cut through, your portfolio needs concrete “impact stories”: a growth experiment that moved a metric, a design+AI side project (like an auto-layout tool or content generator), or a small product you’ve shipped and iterated based on real user feedback.

Telstra Graduate and Intern Programs

As one of the country’s biggest tech employers, Telstra is less like a cramped sharehouse and more like a sprawling complex: networks, software, cyber, cloud and DevOps all under one roof, with teams spread across Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and regional centres.

Where Telstra fits in your career map

The graduate program is ideal if you’re drawn to networks, software engineering, cybersecurity or cloud, and especially if you don’t already live in the Sydney-Melbourne corridor. According to the official Telstra Graduate Program overview, grads typically earn around $85k-$95k AUD, with an 18-month program structured into rotations. Summer interns complete paid placements of roughly 12 weeks, giving you a concentrated burst of learning and a shot at a return offer.

What you’ll actually work on

Rather than sitting on the periphery of AI, you build the infrastructure that makes it possible. Typical rotations include:

• Network engineering for 5G, fibre and software-defined networks
• Software development for customer apps and internal tools
• Cyber security operations, threat detection and incident response
• Cloud and infrastructure automation that underpin data and AI platforms

Those skills are directly relevant to large enterprise buyers of tech - banks, governments, miners and retailers - who depend on Telstra’s networks and cloud partnerships to run AI-heavy workloads.

Mentorship, culture and odds of getting in

Telstra describes its environment as “accelerated learning”, with formal coaching, executive mentoring and structured training built into the grad and intern pathways. External reviews consistently highlight its hybrid work model and inclusive culture, with diversity scores around 9.7/10 in some surveys of Australian graduates.

Competition is real but not suffocating: well-targeted candidates can expect roughly 10-20% offer rates. For the 2026 intake, applications open on 18 March 2025 for a February 2026 start, so timing and preparation matter. Candidates from outside major capitals stand out when they can point to hands-on projects - home labs, networking side gigs, cyber competitions - that show they’re already treating infrastructure as more than just theory.

CBA Technology Graduate Program

Among Australia’s big four, CBA is the sharehouse with the surprisingly great kitchen: not always the coolest logo in the corridor, but quietly running one of the most advanced digital banking stacks in the world, including the CommBank app that millions of Australians tap every day.

Where this program can take you

The Technology Graduate Program is built for final-year students and recent grads who want enterprise-scale software, cloud and data experience from day one. Public ranges on grad sites put starting pay around $75k-$85k + super, with an 18-month program made up of two 9-month rotations. It sits inside a bank that has aggressively modernised its tech; in an AWS re:Invent presentation, CBA engineers walk through how they’re rebuilding core services on cloud infrastructure.

The kind of work you’ll touch

Rotations are wide-ranging but typically include:

• Engineering on the CommBank mobile app and digital channels
• Cloud platform and site reliability work as systems move to AWS and Azure
• Data engineering and analytics across risk, fraud and customer insight teams
• AI/ML modelling for credit risk, personalisation or operations

This is where you get to work on problems like real-time fraud detection or responsible lending models, which many career guides now cite as some of the most defensible AI and data jobs in Australia’s finance sector.

Mentorship, brand and how hard it is to get in

CBA backs grads with structured bootcamps, internal training and a buddy system that pairs you with former grads now in permanent roles. The program regularly appears in “Top STEM employer” shortlists, reflecting a strong reputation for scale, tooling and learning culture.

Competition is solid but broader than pure tech firms; assume roughly 10-15% offer rates for well-prepared candidates. For AI-minded readers, that makes CBA a rare combo: stable employer brand, hands-on exposure to regulated ML systems, and a skill set that transfers to roles highlighted in guides like Emergi Mentors’ best tech jobs for career changers.

Australian Government Digital Traineeship Program

If the idea of quietly modernising Medicare, myGov or border systems appeals more than chasing the latest fintech logo, the Australian Government Digital Traineeship is your kind of sharehouse. Instead of beanbags and hoodies, you get public-impact projects, APS stability and an earn-while-you-learn path into data, cyber and software roles.

Who this pathway is built for

The program targets school leavers and career changers who don’t yet have a degree but can show curiosity and basic digital skills. According to the official APS Digital Traineeship overview, trainees typically earn around $71k-$79k AUD plus a very generous 15.4% superannuation, while completing a nationally recognised Certificate IV or Diploma in IT over 12-24 months.

What you actually do day to day

Placed into agencies across Canberra, Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and other hubs, you rotate through work such as:

• Software development (often low-code plus traditional stacks)
• Cyber security and information assurance
• Data analysis, dashboards and reporting on policy or service outcomes

Departments from the Digital Transformation Agency to Agriculture’s data and digital teams use the program to build long-term capability, not just fill temp roles.

Mentorship, conversion and your odds

You join as part of a cohort, with structured mentoring, buddy systems and dedicated study time through TAFE or other RTOs. APS information pages on trainee and school-leaver programs emphasise high conversion to ongoing APS roles, giving you a clear path into permanent data, cyber or software positions once you finish.

Competition is real but more forgiving than big tech: if you meet eligibility and apply thoughtfully, expect roughly 15-25% offer rates. For regional Australians and those priced out of inner-city sharehouses, it’s one of the most stable on-ramps into Australia’s growing govtech and AI ecosystem.

Google Australia Apprenticeships

Not everyone gets into big tech via the classic CS-degree-plus-honours route. Google’s Australian apprenticeships exist for exactly that reason: to give self-taught developers, career changers and non-traditional grads a shot at world-class engineering and cloud experience in Sydney.

How the apprenticeship is structured

Google describes these roles as offering a competitive salary + benefits in line with local entry-level tech pay, with programs typically running for 12-24 months depending on the stream. You split your time between structured classroom learning and hands-on project work on internal infrastructure or Google Cloud customer solutions, building fluency in tools like Kubernetes, BigQuery and modern data pipelines.

The work you’ll actually do

Day to day, apprentices can expect to:

• Learn core CS fundamentals: algorithms, data structures and systems design
• Contribute to internal services that power search, ads or collaboration tools
• Help design and implement cloud architectures for enterprise customers
• Automate deployment, monitoring and reliability for production systems

Google is one of several global firms spotlighted in resources like BestColleges’ overview of companies offering tech apprenticeships, which notes that these schemes are increasingly used to “unlock new career pathways at scale”.

Mentorship, competitiveness and how to prepare

Apprentices are paired with senior Google engineers and follow a defined curriculum designed to prepare them for roles like Software Engineer or Cloud Engineer, either at Google or within the broader ecosystem of partners and startups. Competition is intense: with limited spots and global brand pull, you should assume single-digit % offer odds.

Without a CS degree, your application has to prove you can keep up. That usually means a mix of solved algorithmic problems, substantial personal or open-source projects, and familiarity with at least one major cloud platform. Articles tracking how top apprenticeship employers are “shaping the future” of tech careers, such as NCFE’s analysis of modern tech apprenticeships, emphasise exactly this blend of theory and production experience.

Microsoft LEAP Apprenticeship

LEAP is Microsoft’s answer to the question many mid-career Australians quietly ask: “Is it too late to get into software or cloud?” Designed as a diversity-focused apprenticeship, it assumes you’ve already built skills in another field and need a concentrated bridge into engineering or tech delivery work.

Who LEAP is designed for

This pathway suits career changers - teachers, marketers, analysts, operations managers - who’ve started coding or working with data and want a structured way into software engineering or program management. According to Microsoft’s own description in its LEAP case study, participants receive a paid hourly stipend that’s competitive with entry-level tech roles, over a full-time, bootcamp-style program lasting around 16 weeks.

What you’ll do in an Australian cohort

LEAP combines classroom-style instruction with hands-on work embedded in Microsoft teams or partner organisations in hubs like Sydney and Melbourne. Depending on your track, you might:

• Build internal tools and customer-facing features using C#, .NET and Azure
• Support program management for cloud migrations or enterprise rollouts
• Contribute to data or AI-adjacent projects where Azure services power analytics and automation

The model mirrors what Australian coaching providers highlight as critical for late entrants to tech: real commercial projects, not just classroom exercises, a theme echoed in mid-career success stories on Career Success Australia’s testimonial pages.

Mentorship, outcomes and how hard it is to get in

Each apprentice is paired with a senior mentor and supported by weekly peer sessions, with LEAP explicitly positioned as a pipeline into full-time roles at Microsoft or within its partner network (consultancies, Microsoft-focused agencies, large corporates). Globally, cohorts are small and selective; for Australian intakes, it’s realistic to assume offer rates of under about 15% for well-prepared applicants.

To be competitive, you’ll need a clear story and a portfolio: a few solid apps or data projects, plus proof you can translate earlier career experience - stakeholder management, domain knowledge, communication - into the kind of engineering or delivery work LEAP is designed to accelerate.

AWS re/Start Australia

Among all the options on this list, AWS re/Start is the one that quietly flips the script for people who think they’ve “missed the boat”. It’s built for Australians who are unemployed or under-employed and want a full-time pivot into cloud, without paying a cent in tuition.

How the program works

According to the official AWS re/Start program page, the course is 100% free, runs for around 12 weeks full-time, and is delivered through local partners (in Australia that has included groups like Goanna Education and Babcock). Some cohorts provide small living stipends or internet support, but the core value is the training itself: a structured pathway into junior cloud roles.

What you’ll actually learn

Expect a very practical curriculum focused on:

• Linux fundamentals and command line skills
• Networking and basic cloud security
• Python scripting for automation
• Core AWS services like EC2, S3, IAM and VPC
• Prep for the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner exam

The format is instructor-led with labs, group projects and job-readiness coaching (CVs, interview practice, LinkedIn), as outlined in the AWS re/Start FAQ.

Outcomes, employers and your odds

Globally, AWS reports that re/Start has helped more than 20,000 job seekers into cloud roles, with graduates commonly landing as Cloud Support Associates, Junior DevOps Engineers or IT Support staff in AWS partner companies and local SMEs. Intakes in Australia run on a rolling basis with competitive but achievable entry; many cohorts report acceptance rates closer to mainstream traineeships than to big-tech grad schemes.

If you’re in hospitality, retail or admin and eyeing AI or data long term, re/Start is a smart first step: you learn the cloud backbone that modern ML workloads actually run on, while building experience you can leverage into more specialised roles later.

TAFE-Backed ICT Traineeships

ICT traineeships are the quiet workhorses of Australia’s tech pipeline: no hype, just a steady pay cheque, a TAFE timetable and a supervisor who expects you to fix the Wi-Fi before smoko. For many school leavers and regional career changers, they’re the first realistic way to get paid for tech work without moving to a capital city or taking on HECS debt.

How the money and study stack up

Award wages for adult ICT trainees commonly sit at $850+ per week, with additional allowances in some sectors. On top of that, eligible trainees can attract government incentive payments of up to around $10,000 over the term, shared between you and your employer as outlined in MEGT’s financial support summary. Programs usually run for 12-24 months, during which you complete a nationally recognised Certificate III, Certificate IV or Diploma in IT through TAFE or an RTO.

What you actually do on the job

Instead of abstract labs, you’re embedded in real workplaces: local councils, schools, MSPs, regional hospitals, SMEs. Typical responsibilities include:

• Level 1/2 support for staff devices, printers and basic networking
• Rolling out laptops, operating systems and endpoint security
• Helping maintain on-prem servers and cloud services for small environments
• Documenting fixes and improvements in ticketing systems

Mentorship, mobility and where this can lead

On-the-job coaching from senior techs is backed by TAFE teachers who map your work to competency units. Guides from institutes like Gordon TAFE’s apprenticeships and traineeships hub emphasise how these pathways ladder into higher quals, vendor certs and, for some migrants, regional PR options.

Once qualified, many trainees step into Level 2 Support, Network Administrator or junior cloud roles, often without needing to uproot from their home town - an underrated advantage in a housing market where moving to inner Sydney or Melbourne isn’t always on the cards.

NAB Technology Talent Program (StarCamp)

Walk into NAB’s tech floors in Melbourne and it feels more like a modern product company than an old-school bank: squads huddled around dashboards, engineers deploying to cloud, data teams tuning models that move real money. The Technology Talent Program, anchored by its StarCamp bootcamp, is how you get a seat at that table.

How StarCamp sets you up

NAB’s own Technology Talent Program page describes StarCamp as an intensive 4-week bootcamp that blends technical upskilling with agile, DevOps and stakeholder skills. You’re employed on a full-time salary from day one, with public ranges commonly cited at around $75k+ AUD. Instead of being thrown straight into delivery, you get a month of structured learning before joining a team.

The work you’ll do after bootcamp

Once placed, you’re embedded into NAB’s broader engineering organisation, working on systems that underpin everyday banking for millions of Australians. Depending on your stream, you might:

• Build and maintain digital banking features across web and mobile
• Work on cloud architecture and platform engineering, often on AWS or Azure
• Design data pipelines and analytics for risk, compliance or customer insights
• Support cyber and resilience work that keeps critical services secure and available

This gives you exposure to regulated, large-scale systems and the kind of applied AI and automation work that sits at the core of modern financial services.

Who it suits and how competitive it is

The program is designed for recent STEM and IT graduates who feel under-cooked for industry and want a structured bridge into software, cloud or data roles. NAB tends to recruit nationally, with a strong presence in the Melbourne CBD and representation in Sydney and other hubs, making it especially attractive if you want to stay in the east coast finance corridor.

Offer rates sit roughly in the 15-25% range for candidates who meet the academic and skills baseline. To stand out, you’ll want at least a couple of concrete projects that show you can work with data, cloud or automation in a semi-realistic context - think a small reporting pipeline, an infrastructure-as-code lab, or an app that solves a genuine workflow problem.

How to actually land one of these roles

That Newtown inspection queue only matters if you know which two or three houses are worth sprinting to first. The same goes for Atlassian, Canva, Telstra, APS or AWS re/Start: you don’t need to apply everywhere, you need to apply smart, with timing, skills and projects that make you an obvious “yes” for a handful of teams.

Time your run around Australian hiring cycles

Large graduate intakes (banks, telcos, major product companies) usually recruit once a year, many opening applications in the first half of the year for roles starting the following February. Government pathways like the APS Digital Traineeship often advertise mid-year for the next calendar intake, while programs such as AWS re/Start and TAFE traineeships run rolling cohorts. Map your target programs, then back-plan: give yourself a few months to upskill and ship projects before each window opens.

Build a precise, not random, skill stack

Australian employers increasingly value focused capability over certificate collecting; analysis from Fuse Recruitment stresses AI proficiency and relevance over generic badges. For most roles in this list, aim for:

• Programming: Python plus one of Java, TypeScript or C#
• Data basics: SQL, data cleaning, simple analytics or ML
• Cloud foundations on AWS, Azure or GCP
• Git and basic CI/CD

You can build that through TAFE, uni, or targeted bootcamps. Affordable online options like Nucamp’s AI and software tracks (roughly eleven months at about AUD 8,470 for a complete path, or shorter focused programs from around AUD 3,190-5,970) give career changers structured curricula without Sydney-rent price tags, and report graduation rates around 75% and employment outcomes near 78%.

Ship Australian-context projects and show up

Create two or three polished projects anchored in local domains: a mock fraud dashboard for a bank, a visualisation using ABS or open gov data, a small FastAPI service deployed to cloud for a hypothetical Telstra or BHP use case. Then get visible where those employers look: campus events at UNSW, UTS, RMIT or QUT; meetups around Tech Central and Docklands; online info sessions for APS and cloud providers. For marquee programs, expect only a small fraction of applicants to be hired - so treat each application like an interview: tailored, evidence-based, and clearly linked to the way you’re already learning and building.

Frequently Asked Questions