Lead Network Automation Engineer

Title: Lead Network Automation Engineer

Location: 5 days week onsite; Columbus OH, Alpharetta, GA, Marietta, GA, Kansas City, MO, Berkley Heights NJ, Omaha NE, Frisco/Dallas TX, Denver CO

Duration/Type of Job: 12+ months

Responsibilities:

Lead Network Automation Engineer
You should expect to join a fast-paced, challenging, and rewarding role in delivering automation across a global network. You will be involved in identifying and designing automation workflows to be used by peers and partner teams. This person will also be looked upon to build up and foster a learning and growth environment as a mentor to other Network Engineers.
What you will do:

• Identify and develop new ways to automate the management of device and network configurations, with a constant eye on decreasing operational issues and general maintenance times
• Design and clearly document efficient automation workflows for use by peers and partner teams
• Design, develop, and maintain automation solutions using Python and tools like Ansible and Terraform to manage and orchestrate network devices across multi-vendor environments (e.g., Cisco, Juniper, Arista).
• Further our efforts to establish and perform our CI/CD pipelining while embracing a continuous learning and experimentation mindset
• Facilitate and participate in infrastructure changes, including planning and deployment from an automation first mindset, to identify and resolve network roadblocks
• Continually educate and grow to foster a learning environment for aspiring NetDevOps Engineers through demonstrations, training, and partnered delivery
• Articulate and document process needs and changes, while guiding leadership towards standardization and adoption, to further enable automation
• Automate network operations including device provisioning, configuration management, security deployments, and network testing.
• Integrate with network APIs, CLI tools, and configuration management systems to enable automated provisioning, configuration, and validation workflows.
• Implement robust automation practices including error handling, logging, and testing to ensure reliability and maintainability across diverse platforms.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with network engineers, systems administrators, and platform teams to translate operational requirements into scalable, reusable automation solutions.
• Continuously evaluate and adopt new tools and libraries (e.g., Netmiko, NAPALM, RESTCONF, gNMI) to enhance automation capabilities and vendor interoperability.
• Monitor, debug, and troubleshoot automation systems to ensure optimal performance and reliability.
• Document automation scripts, processes, and procedures to support knowledge sharing and team training.

What you will need to have:

• 7+ years of deep technical experience with Network Automation tools and technologies
• Recent experience in systems engineering applied to computing or network architectures (e.g., handling requirements gathering to structured implementations like SDLC)
• Proficiency in Python and experience with automation tools such as Ansible, Terraform, and optionally JScript.
• Familiarity with network automation libraries and protocols (e.g., Netmiko, NAPALM, RESTCONF, gNMI).
• Experience with Git and CI/CD pipelines in the context of network automation.
• Solid understanding of network fundamentals including routing, switching, and device configuration.
• Knowledge of DevOps principles and best practices for infrastructure automation.
• Lead coding and development of tools/reporting/processes for workflow enablement
• Strong knowledge of network protocols such as TCP/IP, BGP, OSPF, and routing
• Strong understanding of network security and the ability to develop automation scripts using languages such as Python, Bash, and Powershell
• Extensive knowledge of Layer 4-7 technologies such as DNS, Firewalls, Proxy Services, Load Balancing, and Global Load Balancing
• Thorough understanding of various data structures (SQL, JSON, YAML, XML) and JINJA templates
• Knowledge of Django framework