Team Leader, Audiovisual Conservation

Posted: 31/07/2025
- Closing Date: 17/08/2025
- Salary: $94,563.00 - $105,910.00
- Job Type: Ongoing / Non-ongoing; Full time
- Location: Canberra
- Job Category: Arts, Culture

**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 Conservation team is part of Conservation and Collection Management section, Collection Preservation Branch. The team conducts an extensive work program providing a range of activities for the preservation and ongoing care of the audiovisual, documents and artefacts collection. The team has two streams: AV Conservation who prepare and preserve audiovisual material for digitisation, curatorial and access programs; and the Collection Conservation team who look after the documents and artefacts collection, as well as undertaking a range of collection care programs such as collection assessments, exhibition preparation and condition reporting.

The team provides technical advice regarding access and digitisation requests, undertakes straightforward and complex conservation works and ensures the national audiovisual collection is preserved by maintaining current policies and procedures.

**The Opportunity**

The Team Leader Audiovisual Conservation plays a key role in the Audiovisual Conservation team and has a significant depth of audiovisual format knowledge partnered with leadership, supervision and administrative skills to strategically contribute to the NFSA program.

The focus of this role is working with the physical audiovisual collection, coordinating staff resources and ensuring the program meets the strategic objectives.
- 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._

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

- Coordinate, support and supervise the AV Conservation team to deliver the strategic and operational requirements of the section.
- Develop procedures which support efficient workflows, priorities and quality controls for the section.
- Gather data and analyse complex technical issues relating to the audiovisual collection.
- Identify any issues early within workflows and work programs, ensuring effective solutions are provided.
- Advise staff on preservation practices and procedures and work on complex preservation activities such as technical selection and research.
- Train staff in routine and complex practices for audiovisual preservation, and the recording of technical information in the NFSA col