Senior Automation Engineer - Infrastructure / Networking

Senior Software Engineer, Network Automation

Location: Dallas, TX

Work Arrangement: Hybrid

Type: Direct Hire

Compensation: $160,000 – $220,000 base salary + bonus

Overview

We are seeking a Senior Software Engineer, Network Automation to design, build, and scale the software, tooling, and automation platforms that support large-scale data center networking environments.

This role is ideal for an engineer who is equally comfortable writing clean Python, building APIs, working with Infrastructure as Code, and understanding complex networking concepts such as BGP, routing, switching, segmentation, and data center network design. The Senior Software Engineer will help modernize how network infrastructure is provisioned, managed, monitored, and consumed by internal engineering teams.

This is a hands-on engineering role focused on building reliable, repeatable, and self-service network automation capabilities. You will partner closely with Network Engineering, Platform Engineering, Security, and Infrastructure teams to deliver automation solutions that improve speed, reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency across mission-critical environments.

Key Responsibilities

Network Automation & Platform Engineering

• Design, build, and maintain automation frameworks that simplify network provisioning, configuration, and lifecycle management.
• Develop software-driven network automation solutions using Python, Ansible, Terraform, Jinja2, and related Infrastructure as Code tools.
• Build APIs, internal tools, and self-service interfaces that allow engineering teams to consume networking capabilities in a reliable and repeatable way.
• Integrate network automation workflows into CI/CD pipelines to enable testable, version-controlled, and consistent deployments.
• Create reusable automation patterns, modules, templates, and tooling that improve operational scale and reduce manual effort.

Network Infrastructure & Reliability

• Support automation across complex data center network environments, including routing, switching, segmentation, load balancing, firewalls, and network security.
• Partner with network engineers to translate infrastructure requirements into scalable software and automation solutions.
• Implement observability, telemetry, and monitoring workflows to improve visibility into network performance, availability, and reliability.
• Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, and ongoing reliability improvements.
• Help identify opportunities to improve resiliency, standardization, documentation, and operational readiness.

Architecture & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Contribute to architectural design discussions for automation platforms, infrastructure services, and network tooling.
• Collaborate with Network Engineering, Security, Platform Engineering, and Infrastructure teams to ensure automation solutions are secure, scalable, and maintainable.
• Drive projects from design through production implementation with strong ownership and attention to quality.
• Promote engineering best practices around testing, code review, documentation, version control, and deployment standards.

Required Qualifications

• Proven experience across both software engineering and network engineering, with direct ownership of automation, tooling, or platform projects.
• Strong Python development skills with solid software engineering fundamentals, including testing, version control, CI/CD, code review, and maintainable design.
• Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code, configuration management, or templating tools such as Terraform, Ansible, and Jinja2.
• Strong understanding of networking fundamentals, including TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, routing, switching, load balancing, firewalls, and network security concepts.
• Experience designing or integrating APIs, internal tools, services, or platform capabilities.
• Familiarity with cloud-native technologies, including containers and orchestration platforms such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Understanding of distributed systems concepts, including microservices, fault tolerance, observability, security, and scalable service design.
• Ability to work effectively in cross-functional engineering teams and communicate clearly with both software and infrastructure stakeholders.
• Strong problem-solving skills, ownership mindset, and ability to navigate ambiguity in fast-moving technical environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with large-scale data center networking environments.
• Knowledge of vendor ecosystems such as Cisco, Arista, or Juniper.
• Deep understanding of protocols and network design concepts such as BGP, OSPF, VRF, VLANs, ACLs, firewall object groups, segmentation, and multi-tenant network design.
• Experience with segment routing or advanced data center network architectures.
• Experience with relational, NoSQL, or graph databases.
• Knowledge of event-driven or message-based architectures such as Kafka or RabbitMQ.
• Familiarity with service discovery, secrets management, and policy-as-code frameworks.
• Experience applying AI or machine learning techniques to infrastructure problems, such as anomaly detection, predictive analytics, or automated remediation.
• Contributions to open-source networking, infrastructure, or automation projects.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate is a software-first infrastructure engineer who understands networking deeply enough to build practical, scalable automation for complex environments. This person enjoys solving hard infrastructure problems with code, improving repeatability, reducing manual operations, and creating tools that make network services easier and safer for engineering teams to consume.