Role: AWX/Ansible Automation Architect
Locations: 100% Remote
Duration: 12+ Months Contract
Role Summary:
· The AWX / Ansible Automation Architect will be responsible for assessing, designing, and enhancing enterprise automation environments with a focus on high availability, resiliency, and operational continuity.
· This role requires deep expertise in AWX/Ansible, infrastructure automation, Red Hat Ansible Tower, and database management to ensure a robust, scalable, and fault‑tolerant automation platform.
Key Responsibilities:
AWX / Ansible Platform Management
· Administer, maintain, and optimize AWX environments, including upgrades, configuration, clustering, and troubleshooting.
· Design and implement high‑availability (HA) and redundancy strategies for AWX (replicas, node affinity, storage, operator‑based deployment).
· Analyze existing AWX deployments and recommend improvements to prevent outages, performance bottlenecks, or single points of failure.
· Define and enforce best practices for job templates, workflows, inventories, credentials, and RBAC within AWX.
· Manage integration of AWX with GitHub/GitLab/Azure DevOps, ServiceNow, HashiCorp Vault, or other enterprise tooling.
Red Hat Ansible Tower / Automation Controller Administration:
· Provide advanced administration and architectural support for Red Hat Ansible Tower / Automation Controller.
· Implement automation lifecycle governance (development → test → production).
· Manage execution environments, automation hub content, credential management, and secure integration patterns.
· Troubleshoot and optimize job execution performance, scheduling, and controller/worker scaling.
Database & SQL Management:
· Administer and support the PostgreSQL database backing AWX/Automation Controller.
· Implement backup and recovery strategies (pg_dump, PITR, snapshots, scheduled backups).
· Monitor query performance, tune parameters, and design HA architectures for Postgres (e.g., clustering, managed cloud services, Multi‑AZ).
· Ensure proper storage provisioning, replication strategies, and resiliency for AWX’s database layer.
· Support SQL‑based integrations (CMDBs, reporting systems, analytics platforms).
Automation & Infrastructure Engineering:
· Design and review Ansible playbooks, roles, modules, and automation frameworks following best practices.
· Provide stewardship over automation content versioning, GitOps workflows, and secure code review processes.
· Integrate automation with cloud and on‑prem platforms (AWS, Azure, VMware, Cisco, etc.).
· Implement monitoring, logging, observability dashboards, SLOs/SLIs, and proactive alerting.
Reliability, Security & Compliance:
· Assess the root causes of prior outages (e.g., patch‑related AWX failures) and develop mitigation strategies.
· Implement secrets management, RBAC, least‑privilege principles, and credential isolation for automation workloads.
· Ensure automation environments meet enterprise security, compliance, and audit requirements.
Required Skills & Experience:
· Hands‑on AWX administration, including Operator deployment, Kubernetes/OpenShift knowledge, and HA design.
· Strong PostgreSQL or SQL database administration experience (backup, recovery, replication, tuning).
· Red Hat Ansible Tower / Automation Controller administration experience (HA, RBAC, workflows, scaling).
· Expert‑level knowledge of Ansible playbooks, YAML, roles, inventories, templating, Ansible Vault.
· Kubernetes (k8s) skills for managing AWX clusters, including pods, deployments, ingress controllers, and stateful services.
· Strong Linux (RHEL/CentOS) systems understanding.
· Experience integrating automation with CI/CD pipelines.
· Familiarity with logging, monitoring, observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, Splunk).
Soft Skills:
· Ability to assess client environments and produce clear architectural recommendations.
· Strong documentation skills (HLDs, LLDs, runbooks, operational models).
· Ability to communicate complex concepts to technical and non‑technical audiences.
· Proven record of stabilizing and maturing automation platforms in enterprise environments.
Preferred Certifications:
· Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE)
· Red Hat Certified Specialist in Ansible Automation
· Kubernetes certifications (CKA/CKAD)
PostgreSQL or cloud database certifications (AWS/Azure/Google Cloud Platform)