Director, Selective Education Placement

Company description:

The Department of Education is the largest provider of public education in Australia with responsibility for delivering high-quality public education to two-thirds of the NSW student population. For more information about the Department of Education, please visit

Job description:

• Join a leadership group transforming education in NSW, and make a difference to students in NSW
• Public Service senior executive band 1 role with a remuneration range of $239,251 - $264,197 per annum
• Full time, Term role up to 27 January 2028 (with the possibility of extension or conversion to ongoing employment)
• Based in Parramatta with flexible work options and travel within NSW as required

About us

Our purpose in Education is to equip young people to lead rewarding lives in a complex and fast-changing world. This is important because the learners of today are the foundation of a prosperous Australia tomorrow.

To support our young people to thrive, we must ensure we are one of the best education systems in the world. This means building a system focused on student outcomes, and a system that offers a great place to work. Explore the Department of Education website for more information.

About the role

The Director, Selective Education Placement leads the delivery of strategic projects and processes that support equitable access to selective high schools and opportunity classes across NSW. The role is responsible for overseeing the selective education placement process, driving continuous improvement of testing and placement procedures, and ensure the department meets its commitments to transparency, fairness and excellence in selective education

This is a fast paced, high-profile leadership role that leads a dedicated team delivering the annual selective education and opportunity class placement cycles, ensuring seamless testing, assessment, and student placement processes. The role will also manage multiple internal and external stakeholders overseeing governance, reporting and quality assurance activities, ensuring all milestones are met in a timely manner and within budget.

This is a hands-on role that blends strategic oversite with operational delivery and is ideal for someone who thrives on managing complexity and achieving measurable results.

For more details about this role, please click here to view the Role Description.

About you

You are a strategic and results driven leader with extensive experience in high-level project management, ideally at the Director level. You have a proven ability to establish, lead, and manage new business units, driving performance and delivering outcomes within defined timeframes and large budgets. A strong understanding of the department will be essential to your success in this role, enabling you to navigate complexity, build credibility, and deliver on key strategic objectives.

Your strong governance expertise and sound judgement enable you to oversee large-scale operations with confidence. You bring advanced capability in influencing, negotiating, and building trusted relationships with a wide range of stakeholders across government, education sectors, and the community.

You have demonstrated success managing large budgets and complex projects while fostering collaboration, accountability, and high performance within your teams and you are motivated by the opportunity to deliver equitable, high-quality educational outcomes for students across NSW.

To be successful in this role, you will have:

• Demonstrated extensive experience at a senior level in the management in a large complex organisation.
• Knowledge of and commitment to implementing the Department's Aboriginal Education Policy and upholding the Department's Partnership Agreement with the NSW AECG and to ensure quality outcomes for Aboriginal people.
• Appropriate tertiary qualifications in a relevant discipline such as education, business, management, social sciences or communications, and/or equivalent knowledge and experience.
• Hold a valid clearance to work with Children (Working with Children Check).
• Demonstrated understanding of and commitment to the value of public education.

As a condition of employment, successful candidates who have not previously worked for the department will be required to provide a current Working with Children Check (WWCC) Clearance number. This option would allow the WWCC to naturally expire without further communication needed with the employee. The employer obligations under the WWCC would apply for duration of the WWCC's validity (up to 5 years).

Interested?

To apply for this role, please submit an online application and attach your resume along with a cover letter which describes how your capabilities, knowledge and experience make you the best person for this role.

Applications Close: 11:59pm on Sunday, 23 November 2025

Contact: For enquiries about the recruitment of this role, please contact the Executive Recruitment team via

Please note:

We welcome applications from all ages and genders, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, culturally and linguistically diverse groups, the LGBTQIA+ community, veterans, refugees, and people with disability. If we can make some adjustments to our recruitment/interview process to better enable you to shine, please contact the Diversity and Inclusion Team ) or visit NSW Department of Education Diversity and Inclusion.

A talent pool may be created for future ongoing and temporary roles and is valid for a period of up to 18 months. Candidates on a talent pool may be chosen and directly offered employment in other or similar roles (ongoing or term) in the near future.