Australia · 2026 · graduate level
Eight graduate IT roles, end to end
Eight graduate roles, each with the job ad a candidate would apply to, the questions a panel would actually ask, and a worked example CV with notes on why it lands. Everything here is written for the Australian market in 2026. Every company and candidate is fictional.
Candidate viewThe eight job ads on their own, each with its example CV. No questions and no model answers, so the links are safe to send to someone you are interviewing.
The eight roles
Each role is a pack of its own: the job ad a candidate would apply to, the question bank with model answers, and an annotated example CV.
Software Developer
Ships features end to end on a customer-facing web platform.
DevOps / Platform Engineer
Builds and runs the infrastructure other engineers deploy onto.
AI / ML Engineer
Builds language-model features that have to work on real, messy inputs.
Data Engineer / Analyst
Turns raw operational data into numbers the business will actually act on.
Cyber Security Analyst
Works the alert queue that decides whether an intrusion is caught in an hour or a month.
Business Analyst
Turns what the business says it wants into something a delivery team can actually build.
IT Support / Systems Administrator
The first person anyone calls, and the most common way into infrastructure work.
QA / Test Engineer
Finds the defect before a customer does, and can prove it in a way a developer can act on.
Interviewer view and candidate view
The eight pages above are the interviewer view: job ad, question bank, model answers and CV. Each role also has a candidate view at /jobs/, holding only what someone would see in a real process, which is the job ad, plus the example CV as preparation material. The questions and model answers are not in those pages at all, so the links below can go straight to a candidate. Nothing under /jobs/ links back into the question banks, so a candidate who trims the address lands on the list of vacancies.
How to use this pack
If you are preparing for interviews
Read the job description first and highlight the phrases that describe you. Then work through the questions with the answers hidden - the Hide all answers control at the top of each question set exists for exactly this. Say your answer out loud before revealing what a strong one covers. Reading an answer and thinking yes, obviously is not the same as producing it under pressure.
If you are running mock interviews
Give the candidate the job description in advance, nothing else. Pick six to eight questions across the categories rather than working top to bottom - real panels mix behavioural and technical. The red flag line under each answer is what an interviewer is actually listening for and is usually the more useful half.
If you are training a hiring panel
Use the question banks as a structured guide so every candidate is scored against the same thing. The example CVs work well as calibration exercises: hand a panel one CV with the annotations removed and ask what they would probe.
If you are writing your own CV
Do not copy these. Copy the structure, the density of numbers, and the honesty of the skills lists. The annotations beside each CV explain the reasoning so you can apply it to your own material.
What an Australian graduate process looks like
Not every employer runs every stage, but they run them in roughly this order. Large graduate programs add an assessment centre; startups often compress the whole thing into two conversations and an exercise.
- 1
Application 1 - 2 hours
CV plus short written questions. Cover letters are on the way out at graduate level in Australia; three targeted questions are more common now.
- 2
Online assessment 45 - 90 min
A coding exercise, SQL screen, psychometric test or game-based assessment. Usually automated and usually the biggest cut.
- 3
Recruiter screen 20 - 30 min
Motivation, logistics, salary expectations, working rights. Short and conversational, but people do fail it by being vague about why they applied.
- 4
Technical interview 45 - 75 min
The core stage. A walkthrough of your exercise plus fundamentals. Increasingly conversational rather than whiteboard algorithms.
- 5
Values or team interview 30 - 45 min
Collaboration, handling disagreement, how you behave when you are wrong. This is a real stage, not a formality.
- 6
Assessment centre Half to full day
Common at large employers and grad programs: group exercise, case presentation, and back-to-back interviews in one day.
- 7
Offer 2 - 10 days
Verbal first, then written. Reference checks, and sometimes a police check depending on industry.
Answering behavioural questions: STAR
Every behavioural question in this pack can be answered with this structure. The worked example runs through all four parts of a single story.
Situation
Two sentences maximum. Where, when, who else. Most candidates spend half their answer here - do not.
In my final year group project, four of us had six weeks to build a booking system.
Task
What you specifically were responsible for. Make it clear this is your work, not the team's.
I owned the API and the database schema.
Action
The bulk of the answer. What you did, what you decided, why you decided it that way.
Two weeks in, our schema could not represent a booking spanning two days. I mapped the three options, costed each in hours, and proposed the migration because the alternative would have broken our reporting requirement. I wrote the migration and a rollback, and pair-tested it with a teammate.
Result
What actually happened, with a number if you have one, and what you learned.
We lost a day rather than a week, the feature shipped, and I now sketch the data model before writing endpoints - it has saved me twice since.
Questions you will get in every role
Tell me about yourself.
Ninety seconds, structured as: where you are now, one or two things you have done that are relevant, and why you are sitting here. Not a chronological life history. Practise it out loud until it stops sounding rehearsed.
Why do you want to work here?
Name something specific about the company or product that you could not say about a competitor. If you cannot find anything, spend twenty minutes on their engineering blog, their app, or their annual report before the interview.
What is your greatest weakness?
Pick a real one you are actively working on, and say what you are doing about it. Not a strength in disguise. Interviewers have heard perfectionist several thousand times.
Tell me about a time you disagreed with someone.
The disagreement matters less than how it ended. Show that you argued the point, listened, and either changed your mind or accepted the decision gracefully.
What questions do you have for us?
Always have three, and never ask something answerable from the careers page. Each role in this pack has five worth stealing.
What are your salary expectations?
Give a range based on published graduate benchmarks and say it is negotiable for the right role. It is fine to ask what band the role sits in - most graduate programs have a fixed one anyway.
Graduate salary benchmarks
| Role | Base (AUD, excl. super) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Software Developer / Engineer | $75,000 - $90,000 | Sits on the national computing median. Higher at large technology employers and investment banks; lower at agencies and small consultancies. |
| DevOps / Cloud / Platform | $78,000 - $95,000 | Few true graduate roles exist. Many people enter through a developer program or a service desk and move across in year two. |
| AI / Machine Learning | $85,000 - $100,000 | The widest spread of the four, and the figure most likely to date quickly. Skewed by whether the work is applied product engineering or research. |
| Data Engineer / Analyst | $72,000 - $90,000 | Analyst roles sit at the lower end and engineering roles at the upper. The gap widens after two years. |
| Cyber Security | $78,000 - $95,000 | Frequently the highest-paying graduate entry point outside AI. Managed security providers, banks and government run the largest intakes. |
| Business Analyst | $70,000 - $85,000 | One of the largest graduate intakes in the country once banks, insurers, government and consultancies are counted together. |
| QA / Test Analyst | $68,000 - $82,000 | A lower entry band than development, and it closes as automation skill builds. Strong demand in regulated software. |
| IT Support / Service Desk | $60,000 - $72,000 | The lowest band and the most common way in. A legitimate route into platform, systems and security work. |
All figures are Australian dollars, base salary, excluding superannuation - 12% for 2026-27, unchanged on 1 July 2026. The anchor is the 2025 Graduate Outcomes Survey, published June 2026: a median full-time starting salary of $80,000 for Computing and Information Systems graduates, against $77,000 across all undergraduate fields. The bands below spread around that median by specialisation. Employer size and sector move these further than the job title does - a big-four bank, a mining company and a twenty-person startup pay very differently for the same role. Treat them as a sanity check for a mock job ad, not as a benchmark to advertise against without your own market data.
Preparation checklist
Two weeks out
- Rewrite your CV against the specific job description, not generically
- Build or finish one project you can talk about for ten minutes
- Write and rehearse your ninety-second introduction
- Prepare six STAR stories that can be reshaped to fit most behavioural questions
One week out
- Work through the technical question bank for your role with answers hidden
- Do one timed practice exercise under real conditions - no pausing, no searching
- Research the company: product, recent news, engineering blog, who you will meet
- Write your three questions for them
The day before
- Reread your own CV and be ready to defend every line on it
- Reread your submitted code or case exercise
- Check the logistics - link, address, parking, who to ask for
- Stop studying by early evening. Cramming a new framework the night before helps nobody
On the day
- Ask a clarifying question before answering anything open-ended
- Think out loud - silence is scored worse than a wrong turn you explain
- If you do not know, say so and then say how you would find out
- Take notes. It is not rude and it makes your closing questions better
Before you use any of this
All companies, people, contact details and results in this pack are invented for practice purposes. Meridian Freight & Logistics, Kestrel Health Systems, Corella AI, Yarrow Energy Retail, Ironbark Security Group, Currawong Mutual, Banksia Learning Group, Bluegum Software and every employer named inside a CV do not exist, and any resemblance to a real organisation is coincidental. The example CVs describe fictional candidates and must not be submitted as anyone's own. All salary figures are in Australian dollars and are anchored to the 2025 Graduate Outcomes Survey published in June 2026 - verify against current market data before using them in a real job advertisement.