Adelaide-based defence firm Saab Australia launches campaign for 100 jobs in 100 days

An Adelaide company wants to hire 100 people for well-paid, secure, skilled jobs within 100 days.

A recruitment campaign for 100 skilled jobs in 100 days is being launched by Adelaide-based defence firm Saab Australia as it prepares to open a $90m combat systems centre.

Aiming to double its 400-strong South Australian workforce by later this year, Saab initially wants to fill hi-tech roles such as software, systems and hardware engineers to build the smart systems in Australian warships.

Premier Peter Malinauskas, touring the Mawson Lakes combat systems centre opening later this year, said the state was “on the precipice of a massive expansion in industrial effort across our defence industry”.

Saab’s new Sovereign Combat Systems Collaboration Centre will expand the firm’s footprint at Mawson Lakes from 6600 sqm to 15,000 sqm, housing work including upgrading Adelaide-built air warfare destroyers’ systems for better missile defence.

Adelaide-built guided missile destroyer HMAS Sydney fires a Harpoon surface to surface missile.

Saab Australia managing director Andy Keough said the Hobart-class air warfare destroyer upgrades starting in 2026 would headline “an enormous amount of work for us going forward”, including on the Hunter-class frigates being built at Osborne Naval Shipyard.

“This is where the naval combat systems work is done. All the ships that go to sea, they have a brain inside them that helps fight the ship. That brain is developed here in South Australia by these people at Saab,” he said.

“We’re very proud of the work they do. We also export that technology overseas as well, not just the combat system itself, but we also develop consoles here in South Australia as well, using our supply chain, which are now being exported to several nations overseas as well.”

Mr Keough said finding skilled staff was challenging, saying the 100 workers would be sought across Australia, including from an annual graduate intake comprising about five per cent of the firm’s staff.

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles and Premier Peter Malinauskas at a ceremony in June, holding the first-cut piece of steel to be used on the first Hunter-class frigate to be constructed at the Osborne Naval Shipyard in Adelaide. Picture: NewsWire / Brenton Edwards

Mr Malinauskas trumpeted SA snaring the prestigious title of the nation’s top-performing economy for the third consecutive time in the respected CommSec rankings, saying the Saab jobs were highly skilled, well-paid and secure.

“That’s the trifecta of the sort of growth that we want to see here in South Australia,” he said.

Acknowledging people were “doing it tough” despite SA being proclaimed the nation’s top economy, Mr Malinauskas argued boosting home supply would reduce pressure on the “single biggest contributor to people’s costs”.

“We’re not sitting around, arrogantly, popping Champagne at these numbers. We’re proud of the fact that we’re number one in the country, but we acknowledge that there’s a lot more work to be done to make sure that being number one actually delivers better outcomes for working people and families,” he said.