Digital Archivist

Help future‑proof Australia’s audiovisual collection in this exciting new digital preservation role.

Note: Salary range includes the NFSA Enterprise Agreement 3.4% salary increase from 13 March 2026. 

About the National Film and Sound Archive

 The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia (NFSA) is Australia’s audiovisual archive, telling the national story by collecting, preserving and sharing audiovisual media, the cultural experience platforms of our time. The collection itself dates back to 1935, making it one of the world’s oldest audiovisual collections. It is also one of the country’s most used cultural collections, with around 125 million views of collection content each year. The NFSA is in a period of significant change. Following increased Government investment, the institution is in a process of digital transformation, establishing the NFSA as Australia’s most dynamic and valued cultural organisation. We are rebuilding our curatorial workforce and developing the NFSA’s capacity to digitise our collection at scale – to preserve it for the future, to make sure it can be discovered, and to share it with all Australians.     

We continue to work on developing a stable, secure and future-proof workforce across our four physical sites based in Canberra and Mitchell in the ACT as well as in Sydney and Melbourne.

We are also undergoing a program of business improvement for many of our corporate systems to improve efficiency and reduce manual handling.

We are an ambitious organisation, and we aim to be an employer of choice within the Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) sector, providing exciting and challenging work, as well as favourable employment conditions and unique development opportunities for our staff.

Cultural Values

We are an equal opportunity employer, embracing a diverse range of applicants such as veterans, and people who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander, LGBTQIA community members, individuals with disabilities and/or health conditions, as well as those from varied faith and cultural backgrounds. At the NFSA we prioritise the development of a safe, inclusive, and high-performance culture through shared actions and behaviours that align with our strategy and direction. This empowers our employees to effectively contribute to our goals.

The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia is committed to ensuring a child-safe and child-friendly environment. All employees are expected to demonstrate a commitment to, and support for these principles in theory and practice.

About the Team 

The Digital Preservation team is part of the Digital Branch. The team plays a key role in sustaining the systems, workflows, and operational processes that support the National Film and Sound Archive’s digital collection, ensuring it can be preserved, managed, and made available for access and reuse over time. The team’s work underpins long-term preservation outcomes across digitised and born-digital content, supporting organisational priorities in digital preservation, born-digital acquisition, and digitisation programs. Working collaboratively across curatorial, collecting, technical and delivery areas, the team translates preservation intent into scalable, standards-aligned practice, manages and evolves the preservation systems ecosystem, and delivers repeatable operations across ingest, curation, access, and migration. The team also provides active digital collection care and risk management, undertakes legacy and backlog recovery to reduce inherited technical debt, and pilots emerging and complex digital forms, transitioning successful approaches into sustainable business-as-usual capability.

The Opportunity 

The Digital Archivist provides specialist advice, analysis and professional judgement to ensure NFSA’s complex audiovisual and born-digital works can be acquired, represented and preserved in a way that is scalable, standards-aligned, and fit for future access and use. Working in close partnership with collecting, curatorial, systems, infrastructure, and processing teams, the role defines and documents preservation intent, appraisal logic, and what constitutes the preserved digital work (including required files and essential context) early so that digital preservation requirements and risks are addressed before material enters ingest, processing or migration workflows in line with the NFSA Collection Policy. 

This is a practitioner-leadership role that strengthens organisational capability by embedding practical accessioning and preservation workflow models, resolving complex preservation issues through informed judgement, and building shared understanding through guidance, documentation, coaching and supervision, training, and cross-team influence. 

Key Responsibilities 

Under limited direction, this position is responsible for delivering the following functions:

• Deliver structured accessioning and preservation support and guidance to collecting and curatorial teams to inform appraisal, selection, and accessioning decisions for born-digital and complex materials.  
• Identify preservation risks early, enable practicable acquisition in line with the NFSA Collection Policy, and reduce downstream risk and rework.
• Translate curatorial and collecting intent into clear, documented preservation guidance that informs processing and ingest workflows, validation rules, and decision-making across digital preservation operations.
• Act as an escalation point for complex preservation issues requiring interpretation or judgement, including investigation of complex or legacy/backlog materials and working collaboratively with systems, processing, and operational specialists to resolve issues.  
• Work with systems and collecting teams to define and document what needs to be preserved for complex digital works, including how files, versions, platforms, and essential context fit together, using relevant metadata standards (e.g. PREMIS, METS) to support long-term understanding, preservation and access.
• Support uplift in metadata practice for born-digital and managed digital content, including alignment with the NFSA Collection Data Model and reporting approaches for complex digital materials.
• Develop, document, and continuously improve born-digital accessioning and preservation workflow models, enabling scalable BAU throughput while maintaining quality, integrity, and usability across evolving content streams.
• Contribute to preservation reporting and effort modelling to inform continuous improvement, capability uplift, and operational planning.
• Build organisational capability through cross-team collaboration, coaching, supervision, and training, and research-informed continuous improvement. 
• Develop and maintain clear, current preservation guidance and knowledge resources (e.g. templates, decision trees, standards guidance, packaging models) that strengthen practice across disciplines.

Selection Criteria 

The successful candidate will demonstrate their capacity against the following: 

Qualifications and experience:

Desirable:

• Familiarity with contemporary audiovisual digital forms and the implications for preservation and access. 
• Experience contributing to pilot activities, continuous improvement, or applied research/experimentation in digital preservation practice.

Please note: This recruitment process is intended to fill both current and future vacancies. While the position on offer is ongoing, a merit pool of suitable applicants may be established to fill similar ongoing and non-ongoing positions within the next 18 months.