Tech company Atlassian has a big goal: to hire 1032 Australians over the next 12 months.
Billionaire co-founder Scott Farquhar rolled into the Australian National University campus with the AtlassiVan on Monday to talk up the plentiful, well-paid jobs in tech that can be based anywhere in Australia.
"We've made the move to the team anywhere model. So it doesn't matter whether you're living in Maroochydore or Mount Gambier or Macarthur or even a motorhome, you can work for Atlassian," Farquhar said.
"So we came to Canberra, one of the most livable cities in Australia, to say that you can work for us and live where you are."
Mr Farquhar and co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes met at university and founded the company in 2002 with a $10,000 credit card debt.
Back then, the thinking was that all technology jobs were likely to be outsourced to India.
Mr Farquhar attended the jobs summit last month where the philosophy had completely reversed.
The tech sector is one of the fastest growing in the country and firms want home-grown talent to fuel their research and development teams, he said.
Atlassian wants people who can be involved in any part of software design, from building, testing, product management and marketing.
"There's many people that will need to be retrained so whether that is later in their career and moving through a TAFE system or an online course," Mr Farquhar said.
"We want to encourage people to get into university and do university degrees in this area and we're not producing enough graduates out there. That's the reason we're on the road, it's to convince people about moving into the jobs in this industry."
Atlassian already has more than 20 employees working in Canberra - three people were hired in the past week - including research librarian Alison Jones.
Ms Jones came on board in January and has been working from her Weston Creek home.
"I'd used their products but I never thought I'd worked at Atlassian," she said.
"I found an advertisement on LinkedIn for a senior research librarian and I'm a librarian by profession so I had to apply. Though it took a while to realise that when they say, 'we are team anywhere', they really meant that especially for a librarian, who would have thought?"
Her role involves bringing together Atlassian's research and making it more accessible while interacting with colleagues remotely every day.
"I make sure that one things I do is to connect in with colleagues, not just for business, but also just for social and that works really well."
Chief Minister Andrew Barr said technology and higher education sectors would be critical to Canberra's economic development.
"What we want to get to is 250,000 jobs in our local economy by 2025. We're at about 240,000 now, so 10,000 to go," Mr Barr said.
"If Atlassian can contribute to that, that will be a wonderful, wonderful outcome."
ANU students Samruhn Anavatti and Matthew Chen didn't want to pass up the "once-in-a-lifetime" chance to talk to the denim-clad Atlassian co-founder.
Mr Chen, who is studying computer science majoring in cyber security, was excited to begin an internship with the company in November.
"I like Atlassian because it is a very values-focused company," he said.
"A lot of tech work can be done remotely and so it should be done remotely where possible, just because the skills are all over the place, as Scott and many others have said. So being able to tap into that market is invaluable."
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