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.