NomadDesk

Senior Software Engineer - Network Automation Architect

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Senior Staff Software Engineer / Network Automation Architect

Build the Next Generation of Network Automation

We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Staff Software Engineer / Network Automation Architect to design and build the next generation of software that operates a large, globally distributed, multi-vendor production network.

This opportunity is designed for an engineer with a distinctive combination of experience:

• You began your career working directly with routers, switches, routing protocols, network configurations, and production incidents.
• You transitioned from traditional network engineering into software engineering and Python development.
• You have designed and built network automation systems, not just individual scripts or playbooks.
• You understand how software decisions affect live network devices and know how to automate change safely.
• You want to remain deeply hands-on in coding, architecture, testing, and platform design.

• Architect and build a new network infrastructure automation platform from the ground up.
• Develop production-quality Python services, REST APIs, background workers, schedulers, device drivers, and data-access layers.
• Expand zero-touch provisioning across a large, multi-vendor network environment.
• Translate network engineering standards and operational intent into testable, maintainable software.
• Create reusable automation patterns for Cisco and Juniper platforms while accounting for vendor-specific behaviors.
• Design relational data models using MariaDB or a comparable production database.
• Build Ansible-based automation capabilities, including inventory, reusable content, execution controls, and integration with platform services.
• Automate configuration generation, device onboarding, state collection, compliance verification, drift detection, firewall operations, and safe network change.
• Establish testing, validation, approval, deployment, and rollback requirements for software-driven network changes.
• Introduce responsible uses of AI-assisted development and agent-based workflows while maintaining human control over device-affecting actions.
• Reduce technical debt and modernize existing Python components without compromising production stability.
• Establish software engineering standards and mentor senior and junior engineers.
• Communicate technical roadmaps, platform health, delivery risks, and architecture decisions to engineering and senior leadership.

• Own the end-to-end architecture of the network automation platform.
• Define service boundaries, APIs, background processing, device integrations, relational data models, operator workflows, and deployment patterns.
• Help create the platform from an early-stage design or codebase through production implementation.
• Determine when automation capabilities should be built within a shared platform and when a separate service or workflow is more appropriate.
• Establish modular architecture patterns that support maintainability, testing, scalability, and future expansion.
• Lead architecture and design reviews while remaining personally responsible for substantial portions of the implementation.
• Develop a technical roadmap that balances greenfield platform creation, current operational needs, and responsible modernization of legacy components.

• Design and develop automation for Cisco and Juniper routers and switches, with additional support for Palo Alto, Arista, and other network platforms.
• Build automation for Day-0, Day-1, and Day-2 network operations.
• Develop zero-touch provisioning workflows for new devices and sites.
• Automate network configuration generation, rendering, validation, comparison, deployment, and post-change verification.
• Build device-state collection, polling, compliance, baseline-management, and configuration drift capabilities.
• Design firewall and out-of-band network infrastructure automation where appropriate.
• Translate network standards involving VLANs, LACP, BGP, OSPF, IP addressing, subnetting, and management connectivity into reusable software.
• Account for vendor-specific configuration models, commit behavior, rollback mechanisms, APIs, and failure conditions.

• Develop maintainable, production-quality Python rather than isolated or task-specific scripts.
• Build REST APIs, services, background workers, schedulers, integration layers, device drivers, and reusable Python packages.
• Apply software engineering practices involving modular design, interfaces, error handling, structured logging, dependency management, secure credential handling, and code review.
• Refactor legacy Python components using incremental and well-tested modernization strategies.
• Diagnose performance and reliability issues involving network round trips, concurrent device operations, database contention, worker capacity, and batch execution.
• Design systems that support idempotency, bounded concurrency, appropriate retries, backpressure, and recovery from partial failures.
• Establish coding standards and help other engineers improve the quality, readability, testing, and maintainability of their work.

• Design and develop Ansible-based network automation, including inventories, roles, collections, modules, plugins, and execution workflows.
• Integrate Ansible with Python services, relational data, source-of-truth systems, approval processes, and operator-facing workflows.
• Define standards for reusable automation instead of creating vendor-specific or site-specific playbooks that cannot scale.
• Establish execution controls that support dry runs, configuration differences, approvals, staged deployment, post-change validation, and rollback.
• Improve the observability, auditability, and repeatability of Ansible-driven operations.
• Support Ansible Automation Platform or comparable centralized orchestration capabilities where appropriate.

• Design and maintain relational data models for devices, interfaces, sites, inventory, network intent, observed state, automation jobs, approvals, and compliance exceptions.
• Develop parameterized SQL queries and reliable data-access layers.
• Create appropriate keys, constraints, indexes, and data-retention strategies.
• Tune production queries and resolve performance or concurrency problems.
• Plan and execute safe database schema migrations.
• Define which information is authoritative, which information is derived from device polling, and how conflicting or stale information should be handled.
• Ensure the platform publishes accurate, current, and traceable information.

• Establish clear architectural boundaries for source-of-truth, IP address management, inventory, intended configuration, and observed device state.
• Design workflows that reconcile intended and observed state without making unsafe assumptions.
• Create mechanisms to detect stale inventory, configuration drift, incomplete changes, and inconsistent network state.
• Ensure all automated decisions are traceable to authoritative data and approved network standards.
• Define freshness, coverage, accuracy, and reliability metrics for platform-published data.

• Design automation with the understanding that a software defect may misconfigure or isolate a production network device.
• Identify automation designs that create unacceptable blast radius and replace them with safer, staged approaches.
• Build change workflows that include:
  • Pre-change validation
  • Dry-run execution
  • Configuration differences
  • Human or policy-based approval
  • Canary or staged rollout
  • Confirmed commit where supported
  • Post-change verification
  • Stop conditions
  • Audit trails
  • Rollback or forward-recovery procedures
• Define how the system should respond to device unavailability, authentication failures, timeouts, partial commits, stale data, telemetry gaps, and inconsistent state.
• Partner with network engineering, security, and operations teams to certify new automated actions before production use.
• Ensure device-affecting automation is never promoted solely because the generated configuration or code appears plausible.

• Define the testing strategy for software that provisions or modifies production network infrastructure.
• Develop unit, integration, contract, cross-functional, and automated regression tests.
• Create realistic device fixtures using captured and sanitized configurations, mocked transports, and structured test data.
• Use virtual or containerized labs to validate Cisco, Juniper, Palo Alto, Arista, and other vendor behaviors where appropriate.
• Establish contract tests for reusable device drivers and vendor-abstraction layers.
• Validate configuration rendering, command execution, state parsing, failure recovery, and rollback behavior.
• Hold AI-generated and human-written code, configurations, and templates to the same evidence standard.
• Require lab validation, peer review, automated testing, and controlled promotion before high-risk changes reach production.

• Use AI-assisted development tools to accelerate appropriate engineering activities while independently validating their output.
• Help define where AI assistance is beneficial, where it introduces unacceptable risk, and where human approval must remain mandatory.
• Evaluate AI-supported use cases such as:
  • Network intent extraction
  • Code and test generation
  • Configuration analysis
  • Change summarization
  • Compliance exception analysis
  • Anomaly identification
  • Incident triage
  • Operational knowledge retrieval
• Design validation mechanisms for non-deterministic output.
• Prevent autonomous AI or agent-based systems from making unverified production network changes.
• Define test evidence, evaluation measures, approval requirements, and audit controls for AI-generated code or recommendations.
• Ensure AI-generated work is treated with the same rigor as a contribution from another engineer.

• Define requirements for build and deployment pipelines, environment parity, worker capacity, scheduler design, database topology, and credential management.
• Maintain disciplined promotion across development, lab, staging, and production environments.
• Ensure releases include application code, database migrations, configuration state, validation evidence, monitoring, and rollback readiness.
• Establish observability for application performance, device operations, job execution, database health, and automation outcomes.
• Diagnose incidents that span both software and network conditions.
• Define operational service levels for the automation platform.
• Report platform health using measures such as:
  • Device and site coverage
  • Polling and inventory freshness
  • Configuration-rendering success
  • Change and verification success
  • Job duration and failure rates
  • Open drift and compliance exceptions
  • Rollback frequency
  • Platform availability and reliability

• Provide technical leadership without relying on formal reporting authority.
• Establish architecture, coding, testing, deployment, and documentation standards.
• Mentor junior engineers in software engineering and network automation fundamentals.
• Mentor senior engineers through architecture reviews, design feedback, and complex problem solving.
• Facilitate productive decisions between software engineering, network engineering, security, and operations teams.
• Estimate work accurately, including engineering effort, lab validation, operational certification, and change-approval time.
• Communicate technical roadmaps and architecture decisions clearly to engineering teams and senior leadership.
• Explain complex risks and tradeoffs in language appropriate for both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

• Eight or more years of relevant engineering experience, including substantial experience in both network engineering and software development.
• A career foundation involving hands-on routing, switching, network configuration, troubleshooting, and production network operations.
• Demonstrated progression from traditional network engineering into Python-based software engineering or network automation.
• Strong production Python development experience, including services, APIs, background processing, automated testing, packaging, logging, and dependency management.
• Demonstrated experience helping create a network automation platform, infrastructure automation system, or significant greenfield automation capability.
• Hands-on experience with both Cisco and Juniper network environments.
• Experience with Cisco IOS-XE or NX-OS and Juniper Junos.
• Deep understanding of L2 and L3 networking, including VLANs, LACP, BGP, OSPF, IP addressing, subnetting, and out-of-band management.
• Experience automating production network devices through NETCONF, vendor APIs, structured CLI, SSH, or comparable programmatic interfaces.
• Experience with Ansible for network automation, including more than basic playbook execution.
• Experience with at least one additional network automation framework or device library, such as Nornir, NAPALM, Netmiko, PyEZ, Scrapli, pyATS, or an equivalent technology.
• SQL and relational data-modeling experience using MariaDB, MySQL, PostgreSQL, or a comparable production database.
• Experience designing, writing, and tuning queries against production schemas.
• Demonstrated judgment involving live network change, including dry runs, configuration differences, staged rollout, verification, stop conditions, and rollback.
• Experience with Git-based development, peer review, automated testing, and CI/CD.
• Experience owning architecture for a major software or automation platform.
• Experience leading design reviews, setting technical standards, mentoring engineers, and communicating technical roadmaps.
• Ability to use AI-assisted development tools responsibly and independently validate generated code, tests, configurations, or recommendations.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Network Engineering, or a related technical discipline, or equivalent practical experience.

• Experience building a new network automation platform from an early-stage design, prototype, or blank repository.
• Enterprise or data center zero-touch provisioning experience.
• Configuration compliance, baseline-management, and drift-detection experience.
• Experience integrating with NetBox, Nautobot, IPAM, CMDB, inventory, or another network source-of-truth platform.
• Advanced Ansible experience, including custom modules, collections, execution environments, event-driven automation, or Ansible Automation Platform.
• Production MariaDB experience.
• Palo Alto PAN-OS or Arista EOS automation experience.
• Firewall automation experience.
• Experience with SNMP, syslog, streaming telemetry, or gNMI.
• Experience with Docker, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or comparable build and deployment tooling.
• Experience using containerlab, vJunos, EVE-NG, Cisco Modeling Labs, or another virtual network lab.
• Data center, colocation, service-provider, or large enterprise network experience.
• Experience automating out-of-band console or network-management infrastructure.
• Experience designing AI-supported operational tools, agent systems, or machine-learning capabilities with measurable evaluation and human-approval controls.
• Public technical contributions such as open-source code, conference presentations, technical articles, standards participation, mentoring, or community leadership.
• Relevant certifications such as JNCIP, JNCIE, CCNP, CCIE, Cisco DevNet, PCNSE, or equivalent practical expertise.

• This is a highly hands-on individual-contributor position.
• Approximately 99% of the role is focused on coding, architecture, platform design, testing, and technical delivery.
• No future people-management responsibility is currently defined.
• The role is not currently part of a formal on-call rotation.
• Automated production changes outside normal business hours are uncommon.
• The successful candidate must live in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex and meet the position's established workplace expectations.

• Understand the current automation platform, network environment, source systems, and operational workflows.
• Build strong working relationships with network engineering, software engineering, security, and operations teams.
• Assess the current Python architecture, Ansible content, MariaDB schemas, deployment processes, testing practices, and major sources of technical debt.
• Produce an initial architecture and phased roadmap for the next-generation automation platform.
• Deliver an early technical capability, prototype, or modernization milestone that demonstrates the target architecture.

• Establish platform architecture, coding, testing, and change-safety standards.
• Deliver initial production capabilities for Cisco and Juniper automation.
• Improve zero-touch provisioning, configuration rendering, validation, or state reconciliation.
• Introduce repeatable lab and automated testing for high-risk device operations.
• Demonstrate measurable improvements in maintainability, reliability, delivery speed, or network-change safety.
• Establish responsible AI-assisted engineering and code-validation practices.

• Deliver major components of the new network automation platform.
• Expand safe, repeatable automation across network devices, sites, and vendors.
• Reduce technical debt and reliance on fragile or manual workflows.
• Improve automation coverage, data freshness, compliance visibility, change success, and rollback readiness.
• Establish a sustainable engineering model that enables senior and junior team members to contribute safely and effectively.