~ $ whoami
I'm Lachlan Harnett, a research software engineer building software for science.
I work in the Scientific Computing group at CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, turning what researchers need into backend software, cloud infrastructure and automated research workflows. I'm happiest working on technology that makes a real difference to people.
happy to chat, get in touch
~ $ ls projects/
- NatureIQCSIRO
CSIRO's SaaS platform that turns ecological research into biodiversity and sustainability insights for organisations.
Integrated a land-carbon science model into the platform, automated client onboarding from dozens of manual steps to one, and built the admin app and system monitoring. Individually recognised with a CSIRO award and reward for this work.
2024 to now - SciansaCSIRO
CSIRO's AI-for-science platform, giving researchers a trusted environment for AI tools, agents and scientific workflows.
Took over the web app at short notice and kept delivery on track. Rebuilt CI/CD with automated tests, then shipped a tools catalogue, versioning, live run updates and an agent registry.
2025 to now - TERN IVCSIRO
Calibrating CSIRO's WAVES model, which simulates how water, carbon and energy move between soil, plants and the atmosphere.
Refactored and recompiled the original Windows model to run on CSIRO's Petrichor HPC cluster, optimised the code for HPC, and implemented a shuffled complex evolution optimiser to effectively parameterise the model.
2026 to now - Posit Connect platformCSIRO
The shared platform research units and enterprise teams across CSIRO use to host their web apps.
Built daily scanners that catch misconfigured apps and invalid permissions, an account management app and load balancer dashboards. They still run every day and cut routine admin work.
2025 to 2026 - Marine Language ToolkitCSIRO
Tools for gathering, analysing and visualising sentiment data for marine research.
Built the interactive app and automated data pipeline. Researchers used it in two papers, including one on how Great Barrier Reef coral reporting fed a spike in climate science denial.
2024 to 2025
- Bitbucket to GitHub migration toolingCSIRO2025
- ParaView animation of compressed air energy storageCSIRO2025
- Busting, most philanthropic projectUQCS Hackathon2020
~ $ cat experience.txt
- Research Software EngineerCSIRO, Scientific Computing2024 to now
- Data Analyst, graduate programCSIRO, Scientific Computing2024
- Academic TutorUnion College, Brisbane2023 to 2024
- Bachelor of Computer ScienceUniversity of Queensland2023
~ $ cat stack.txt
- ai
- code
- infra
- science
~ $ contact
Hiring? [email protected]