Lead Engineer, Network Automation & Orchestration

You will design build and operate core automation and orchestration capabilities for network infrastructure in partnership with Senior Lead Engineers. This role is hands-on and delivery-focused with clear ownership of high-impact components and workflows. A key expectation is helping enable approved software upgrades to be rolled out in 24 hours with no impact to external partners.

What You Will Own

1. Build and maintain production-grade automation workflows for network provisioning changes compliance and remediation.
2. Implement reusable infrastructure-as-code modules and API-driven integrations across network domains.
3. Develop and improve release orchestration pipelines that support fast safe upgrades.
4. Contribute to architecture decisions with Senior Leads and turn them into reliable implementations.
5. Improve observability and operational signal quality for automated and orchestrated network services.
6. Drive operational excellence through automation-first runbooks rollback paths and reliability guardrails.

Key Responsibilities

1. Deliver day-0/day-1/day-2 network automation using declarative and policy-based patterns.
2. Build orchestration logic for phased rollouts canary validation and automated rollback.
3. Ensure upgrade execution meets 24-hour rollout targets for approved software changes.
4. Validate and protect external partner experience during upgrades through pre-checks real-time monitoring and post-change verification.
5. Create testable versioned peer-reviewed network code and contribute to CI/CD quality gates.
6. Partner with SRE Security Platform and Operations teams to embed resiliency and compliance in delivery flows.
7. Troubleshoot production issues perform root cause analysis and implement preventive automation.
8. Mentor engineers and model strong engineering practices in coding reviews and incident response.

Required Qualifications

1. 7 years in infrastructure engineering including 3 years in network automation or orchestration roles.
2. Strong hands-on experience with Python and API-based automation patterns.
3. Practical experience with infrastructure-as-code and automation frameworks (for example: Ansible Terraform Nornir GitOps workflows).
4. Experience shipping reliable automation to production in multi-vendor network environments.
5. Ability to build robust validation and release controls to minimize partner-facing risk.
6. Strong collaboration and communication skills across distributed engineering teams.

Preferred Qualifications

1. Experience with source-of-truth systems and model-driven telemetry.
2. Familiarity with gNMI/NETCONF/RESTCONF and event-driven architecture concepts.
3. Solid networking fundamentals (BGP OSPF/IS-IS EVPN/VXLAN MPLS QoS ACL/policy models).
4. Exposure to hybrid cloud networking and secure service connectivity.
5. Experience supporting externally facing platforms with strict uptime and change-control requirements.
6. English/Spanish bilingual collaboration capability is a plus.