Network Automation Engineer

Network Automation Engineer

Location: London (Hybrid) | Contract: 6 months, Inside IR35

We’re seeking a Network Automation Engineer to join a key client and help them design, build, and maintain automated workflows for high-performance on-premise data centres. You’ll work closely with network and platform teams to turn network intent into reliable, scalable, and repeatable automation.

Key Responsibilities:

• Develop and maintain the network automation framework, including source of truth, templates, validation, and change control.
• Build idempotent automation to provision and manage data center fabrics at scale.
• Integrate with vendor APIs and SDKs (e.g., Arista EOS, NetQ).
• Capture network intent as code, ensuring code quality through peer reviews and validation.
• Implement telemetry, monitoring, and SLOs to enable automated remediation.
• Follow NetDevOps best practices and share knowledge across the team.
• Collaborate with engineers to translate network designs into automated workflows.
• Deliver incremental improvements safely through tested changes.
• Stay up to date on vendor and industry developments and recommend practical adoption paths.

Skills & Experience Required:

• Strong Python development for production-ready automation tools.
• Golang experience for performance-oriented tooling.
• Advanced Ansible knowledge (roles, collections, YAML/JSON data models).
• Proficient with Git workflows, branching, pull requests, and semantic versioning.
• Observability fundamentals (Prometheus, Grafana, logging, tracing).
• Experience with source of truth/CMDB systems (NetBox, Nautobot).
• Solid Linux networking knowledge (iptables, DHCP, DNS) and Bash scripting.
• Workflow orchestration (Temporal or similar tools).
• Network validation/testing tools (pyATS, NAPALM).
• Containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Secure secrets and configuration management (Vault, PKI).
• Experience with data center fabrics, QoS, and high-performance networking is a plus.