IT & Development ✦ Dedicated & full-time

CAD
Operator

Drafting and CAD documentation for design and construction — from $14/hr + GST.

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$14/hrFrom, + GST · full-time
70%Average saving vs a local hire
14 daysBrief → first day
Fully managedWe hire, you lead

What a CAD Operator does

A CAD operator produces accurate drafting and documentation — turning concepts and markups into clean, standards-compliant drawings.

Every StaffingSolutions.io cad operator is recruited, hired and managed by us — reference-checked for your tools, working your business hours, and backed by our zero-risk promise: no placement fee, money-back first week, and a free replacement if the fit isn't right.

What they handle

  • 2D drafting — plans and details.
  • 3D modelling — where required.
  • Markups — into clean drawings.
  • Documentation sets — coordinated.
  • Standards — layers and templates.
  • Revisions — tracked and issued.
The actual work

A week in the role

A CAD operator is the production end of an Australian design office or fabrication shop. Drawings arrive as redlines, sketches, survey files or a model that needs finishing, and go back out as a checked, revision-controlled sheet set ready for the engineer or architect to sign. The detail is the job: line weights, dimensions, revisions, xref paths.

The taskWhat that actually involves
Turn redlines into drawings

Opens the designer's marked-up PDF in Bluebeam Revu, works through each cloud and leader in turn, updates the drawing or model to suit, and returns a back-check set with every markup answered so nothing carries into the next issue.

Produce the DA drawing set

Builds the sheets a council development application needs — site plan with setbacks and levels, floor plans, elevations, sections, shadow diagrams and site analysis — assembled to the council's lodgement checklist for the architect or building designer to check and sign.

Detail to Australian Standards

Draws to AS 1100 conventions — line weights, dimensioning, section marks, hatching and title block fields — and annotates the NCC and AS 1428 items the designer has called up, leaving the compliance sign-off to the certifier.

Keep the Revit model clean

Keeps the central Revit model tidy: worksets, view templates and filters, correct levels and grids, and families built parametrically rather than modelled in place, so schedules and sections update themselves instead of being drawn a second time.

Manage sheets and revisions

Runs Sheet Set Manager or the Revit sheet list, updates the drawing register and revision table, clouds and tags each change with its revision number, and issues a full PDF set where every sheet carries the current revision.

Set up xrefs correctly

Attaches survey, architectural and services xrefs at the right insertion point and coordinate system, checks paths are relative before files leave the office, and binds, audits or purges the drawing so the recipient opens it without missing references.

Run the coordination check

Overlays the structural and services drawings against the architectural set, marks clashes — a duct through a beam, a downpipe through a window head — in Bluebeam or Navisworks, and lists them for the engineer to resolve.

Produce shop and fabrication drawings

Details from the engineer's general arrangement into shop drawings a workshop can build from — member sizes, connection details, hole positions, weld symbols to AS/NZS 1554 and a marking plan — for the engineer to review before release.

Generate schedules and take-offs

Generates door, window, finishes and fixture schedules from the model so they cannot drift from the drawings, and produces cutting lists or bills of material for the fabricator or joinery shop from the same source data.

Apply the office CAD template

Applies the office title block, layer naming, text and dimension styles, plot styles and CTB files to every new drawing, then purges unused blocks and layers and audits the file before it goes into the project archive.

Draw existing conditions from survey

Works from the surveyor's DWG, dimensioned site photographs or a point cloud to build the existing-conditions drawing, and flags measurements that do not reconcile back to the client rather than guessing a dimension to close the plan.

Issue and archive the set

Plots the issue to PDF at A1 with A3 reductions, names files to the client's document convention, uploads to Aconex, Procore or SharePoint, and moves the previous issue to superseded so nobody builds from an old sheet.

Sketch up the RFI response

Turns a contractor's RFI into a marked-up detail or SK sketch showing the proposed resolution, sends it to the engineer or architect for their decision, then rolls the accepted answer into the next revision of the affected sheets.

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Questions

Frequently asked

How much does a cad operator cost?
From $14/hr + GST for a full-time, dedicated team member — roughly $29K a year against $95K–$115K all-in for the local equivalent once you add super, leave, payroll tax, software and a desk. No placement fee, no setup fee, no recruitment retainer: you pay from the day they start, for hours worked, and interviewing candidates costs nothing. Specialist roles sit a little higher. Run your numbers →
How fast can they start?
Typically 14 days from your discovery call to day one. In the first week we source and screen against your brief; you get three matched profiles and interview whoever you like. Once you choose, we handle the offer, the contract, equipment and connectivity checks, and induct them on our side before they reach you. Specialist roles — developers, NDIS claims, anything needing niche software — can take a week longer, because we won't pad a shortlist just to hit a date.
What if the fit isn't right?
You're covered twice over. If it's clearly wrong by day five, your first week is refunded in full. After that, a free replacement any time — new shortlist, new interviews, no second fee, because there was never a first one. Before it gets that far, talk to us: our HR manager will work through it with you and the team member, since most problems turn out to be an unclear process rather than the wrong person, and a fortnight of coaching usually fixes it. Replacing someone is the last resort, not the first move.
Is there a minimum term?
Three months, then month to month. It's the same runway you'd give a new local hire to learn your systems, your clients and your standards — and the team members who get a fair run are the ones who stay for years. There are no exit penalties at any point, and if the issue is the person rather than the role, the first-week refund and free replacement cover that separately.
How do you handle confidentiality?
The same way you'd treat any remote team member. Every placement signs an NDA and a confidentiality clause before day one, and they work inside your systems — your email, your CRM, your file storage — so you control what they can see and can revoke access instantly. No client data is stored on our side.
What stays with you, and what goes to them?
They take the recurring, process-driven part of the CAD Operator role — the work that happens the same way every week and eats your day. Judgement calls, client relationships, anything requiring your licence, sign-off or authority stay with you. The clients who get the most out of a CAD Operator hand over a defined process and keep the decisions, rather than handing over the whole function and hoping. On the discovery call we'll map which tasks fall on which side of that line before you commit to anything.
How do I hand the work over without losing weeks to training?
Record yourself doing the task once and talk through it as you go — a fifteen-minute screen recording beats a written manual every time, and your CAD Operator will turn it into a documented process you both work from. Expect the first fortnight to be shadowing and checking, then steadily less. If you have nothing documented, that's normal and it's not a blocker: we'll help you decide what to record first, and your account manager checks in through the whole ramp-up.