POSITION OVERVIEW

We are looking for an experienced and technically exceptional Technical Lead – Automation to own our infrastructure automation practice and lead a team of automation engineers. This role sits at the intersection of infrastructure engineering, platform development, and DevOps — responsible for designing, building, and governing the frameworks that automate our entire IT estate: provisioning, configuration management, patching, compliance, and self-healing operations.

The ideal candidate brings deep, battle-tested expertise in Terraform (Infrastructure-as-Code) and Ansible (configuration management and automation), combined with strong scripting skills in Python and Bash, and meaningful exposure to ServiceNow development — particularly integrating Ansible Automation Platform and Terraform workflows into ServiceNow ITSM/ITOM for closed-loop, event-driven, and catalogue-triggered automation. You will lead by example — writing production-quality code, setting engineering standards, mentoring the team, and driving automation-first culture across the organisation.

THREE CORE AUTOMATION PILLARS

AUTOMATION DELIVERY LIFECYCLE

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HOW SUCCESS IS MEASURED

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KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

️ Terraform – Infrastructure-as-Code Leadership

• Architect and maintain the enterprise Terraform module library — reusable, versioned, and tested modules for compute, networking, storage, identity, and security resources across AWS, Azure, and on-premises environments.
• Define and enforce Terraform workspace and environment strategy — managing dev, staging, and production state isolation, remote backend configuration (S3 / Azure Blob / Terraform Cloud), and state locking.
• Implement Terraform Cloud / Enterprise workspaces — configuring VCS-driven runs, remote execution, team access controls, and policy enforcement using Sentinel or Open Policy Agent (OPA).
• Lead Terraform code quality governance — mandatory peer review, automated linting (tflint, checkov), security scanning, and Terratest test coverage gates in CI/CD pipelines.
• Design and implement Terraform drift detection workflows — scheduled plan-only runs, drift alerting to ServiceNow incidents, and automated remediation via Ansible for configuration variance.
• Develop and maintain Terraform provider integrations for Cisco infrastructure, VMware vSphere, Nutanix, Cohesity, and cloud-native services beyond standard HashiCorp providers.
• Mentor the team on Terraform best practices — DRY module design, variable hierarchy, locals vs. variables, lifecycle meta-arguments, and managing complex resource dependencies.

Ansible – Configuration Management & Automation Platform

• Design, develop, and maintain enterprise Ansible roles and collections following Ansible best practices — idempotency, handler usage, tag strategy, variable precedence, and Jinja2 templating.
• Own and administer Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) — configuring job templates, workflow job templates, inventories, credentials, RBAC policies, and notification integrations.
• Implement Event-Driven Ansible (EDA) rulebook configurations — triggering automated remediation, compliance enforcement, and patching workflows from ServiceNow events, monitoring alerts, and webhook sources.
• Build and maintain dynamic inventory plugins integrating Ansible with Terraform state files, ServiceNow CMDB, AWS EC2, Azure Resource Manager, VMware vCenter, and Nutanix Prism Central.
• Lead the Linux patching automation programme — scheduling, rolling update strategies, pre/post validation playbooks, rollback logic, and integration with Red Hat Satellite for RHEL lifecycle management.
• Develop Molecule test scenarios for all Ansible roles — Docker and Vagrant drivers, assert-based verification, and integration with CI/CD pipeline quality gates.
• Publish and govern the internal Ansible Galaxy / Private Automation Hub — curating certified content, managing collection versions, and ensuring all automation code is discoverable and reusable.

ServiceNow Integration & Automation Development

• Design and implement ServiceNow Integration Hub spokes for Ansible Automation Platform and Terraform Cloud — enabling ITSM-triggered infrastructure provisioning and configuration change workflows.
• Build ServiceNow Service Catalogue items that trigger Terraform provisioning (VM, cloud resources, network segments) and Ansible configuration jobs as fulfilment workflow steps.
• Develop ServiceNow Flow Designer flows for closed-loop automation — ServiceNow incident triggers Event-Driven Ansible remediation, updates CMDB CI, and auto-resolves the incident on success.
• Configure ServiceNow ITOM Orchestration runbooks that invoke Ansible playbooks via AAP REST APIs for automated server remediation, service restarts, and compliance enforcement.
• Maintain CMDB accuracy through automation — Ansible playbooks and Terraform outputs that auto-populate CI attributes, update relationships, and trigger Discovery re-runs post-provisioning.
• Write GlideScript Business Rules and Script Includes to process Terraform plan outputs, Ansible job results, and automation audit trails within the ServiceNow platform.
• Build custom ServiceNow dashboards tracking automation adoption metrics — catalogue consumption, Ansible job success rates, Terraform provisioning times, and automation-driven incident reduction.

CI/CD Pipeline Engineering & GitOps

• Design and maintain CI/CD pipeline frameworks for infrastructure code — integrating Terraform plan/apply stages, Ansible lint and molecule test gates, and ServiceNow ATF validation into GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins pipelines.
• Implement GitOps workflows for infrastructure management — branch-per-environment strategies, pull request approval gates, automated plan previews, and merge-triggered production deployments.
• Configure pipeline security scanning stages — Checkov, tfsec, Snyk IaC, and Ansible security scan integrations — enforcing security baselines on all infrastructure code before deployment.
• Build shared pipeline templates and reusable CI/CD components (GitHub Actions composite actions, GitLab CI templates) that automation engineers consume across all infrastructure projects.
• Integrate infrastructure pipelines with monitoring and observability tools — post-deploy smoke tests, Datadog / Prometheus metric validation, and automated rollback triggers on failure.
• Manage Git repository strategy — mono-repo vs. poly-repo decisions, branching conventions, tag-based release management, and Git hooks for pre-commit quality enforcement.

Scripting, Toolchain & Platform Development

• Write production-quality Python scripts for infrastructure automation — Terraform state parsing, Ansible inventory generation, CMDB API integration, cost reporting, and compliance data collection.
• Develop and maintain Bash automation scripts for Linux system operations, pipeline toolchain bootstrapping, and MID Server maintenance tasks.
• Build and maintain REST API integration utilities for orchestrating workflows across Terraform Cloud, Ansible AAP, ServiceNow, and cloud provider APIs.
• Evaluate, select, and champion automation toolchain additions — assessing tools such as Pulumi, Crossplane, ArgoCD, or Backstage Developer Portal for infrastructure capability uplift.
• Develop internal developer portal integrations (Backstage / ServiceNow Service Portal) providing self-service infrastructure provisioning with embedded governance guardrails.

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Cloud & Hybrid Infrastructure Automation

• Lead automation of cloud infrastructure across AWS and Azure — VPCs, subnets, security groups, IAM roles, EKS/AKS clusters, managed databases, and storage accounts — all provisioned via Terraform.
• Implement cloud compliance automation — AWS Config rules, Azure Policy, and OPA policy-as-code enforced through Terraform Sentinel ensuring all cloud resources meet security baselines.
• Design and automate hybrid cloud onboarding workflows — new environment provisioning from Terraform infra through Ansible OS configuration, ServiceNow CMDB population, and monitoring agent deployment in a single pipeline.
• Automate cloud cost governance — Terraform tagging policies, cost anomaly alerting integrations, and automated right-sizing recommendations surfaced via ServiceNow catalogue requests.

Technical Leadership & Team Development

• Lead and mentor a team of 3–8 automation engineers — setting technical direction, conducting code reviews, running architecture sessions, and fostering a culture of quality, reuse, and continuous improvement.
• Define automation engineering standards — coding conventions, module design patterns, testing requirements, documentation standards, and peer review processes enforced via pipeline gates.
• Run regular automation guild sessions — showcasing new capabilities, sharing lessons learned from production incidents, and promoting knowledge sharing across infrastructure teams.
• Partner with network, HCI, storage, Linux, ITSM, and cloud teams to identify automation opportunities, eliminate manual toil, and embed automation into every engineering workflow.
• Represent the automation practice in architecture review boards, change advisory boards, and technology steering committees — contributing automation strategy to enterprise-wide initiatives.
• Build the automation team's skills roadmap — identifying training needs, sponsoring certifications, and creating internal learning pathways for HashiCorp, Red Hat, and ServiceNow platforms.

AUTOMATION TOOLCHAIN

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REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Network Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 7–12 years of enterprise IT experience with a minimum of 4 years in an infrastructure automation or DevOps engineering role.
• Demonstrated production expertise in Terraform — writing reusable modules, managing state at scale, and implementing CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure code.
• Hands-on production expertise in Ansible — developing complex playbooks and roles, administering Ansible Automation Platform, and implementing Event-Driven Ansible.
• Proven technical leadership experience — mentoring engineers, owning coding standards, leading architecture decisions, and driving automation adoption across infrastructure teams.
• Meaningful ServiceNow development or integration experience — particularly connecting Ansible AAP and Terraform with ServiceNow ITSM/ITOM workflows.

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PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Experience with Crossplane or Pulumi as alternative or complementary IaC frameworks alongside Terraform for platform engineering workloads.
• Hands-on knowledge of Backstage Developer Portal for building internal developer platforms (IDPs) with self-service infrastructure provisioning templates.
• Familiarity with GitOps frameworks (ArgoCD, Flux) for continuous delivery of infrastructure and application configurations in Kubernetes environments.
• Experience building Ansible EDA rulebooks that consume ServiceNow events, Prometheus alerts, and monitoring webhooks for fully automated closed-loop remediation.
• Understanding of FinOps practices — integrating cloud cost data into Terraform outputs and ServiceNow dashboards for real-time spend visibility and anomaly alerting.
• Exposure to AI/ML infrastructure provisioning patterns — GPU cluster automation, MLOps pipeline infrastructure, or LLM deployment toolchains via Terraform and Ansible.