Principal Network Automation Architect

About the Role

This is a hands-on technical leadership role accountable for the architecture, engineering, and operation of the API-driven network automation platform beneath Flexential’s customer self-service portal. The platform enables customers to order and provision network services on demand, exposing service catalog, feasibility, ordering, provisioning, and lifecycle APIs for L3VPN, Data Center Interconnect (DCI), IP Transit, Layer 2 transport, and cloud on-ramp connectivity. It executes orders across Flexential’s nationwide multi-service backbone spanning 18 metros, 40+ points of presence, and a multi-vendor footprint including Arista, Cisco, and Fortinet routing, switching, and firewall platforms.

As a senior individual contributor reporting to the Vice President, Network Services, the Principal Architect owns the technical vision, architectural standards, and multi-year roadmap for a custom, Python-based network-as-code platform developed in-house. The role holds design authority across the network automation function, mentors senior engineers, and remains directly accountable for building and operating the platform. This high-visibility role impacts customer experience through order-to-activation interval, provisioning success rate, and platform availability.

Responsibilities

• Platform Architecture and Engineering
  • Own the end-to-end architecture of the network automation platform, including application, orchestration, data, integration, and security layers, as a production software product with defined availability targets, release cadence, and support model.
  • Design, build, and maintain a Python-based network-as-code platform, using Ansible and Terraform as supporting technologies where appropriate.
  • Develop the platform as original software, including the provisioning engine, service models, API layer, and data architecture, with open-source components consumed selectively as libraries.
  • Develop backend services using Python (Flask) and contribute to frontend development using JavaScript with Angular or React and Bootstrap.
  • Define and govern API-first architectures, including service contracts, versioning, authentication, and authorization for internal platform consumers.
  • Design and evolve platform data models across document, graph, and timeseries databases to represent network state, service intent, topology relationships, and source of truth.
  • Establish engineering standards through hands-on development, code review, automated testing, and technical design review.
• Self-Service Product Platform and Service APIs
  • Own the northbound API contract consumed by the customer self-service portal for service catalog, feasibility, order submission, provisioning status, and lifecycle operations.
  • Design tenant isolation, authentication, authorization, and rate-limiting models for customer-initiated orders submitted through the portal.
  • Define idempotency, retry, compensation, and reconciliation semantics to ensure safety and consistency under partial failure.
  • Partner with Product Management and portal engineering on service definitions, API contracts, and customer-visible status and error semantics.
  • Establish measurement of order-to-activation interval, provisioning success rate, and platform availability as service levels experienced by customers.
• Network Service Delivery Automation
  • Own the automated service lifecycle for customer-facing network services, including L3VPN, Data Center Interconnect, IP Transit, and Layer 2 transport (service modeling, intent capture, provisioning orchestration, validation, and decommissioning).
  • Architect orchestration workflows spanning the multi-service backbone, including MPLS L3VPN, EVPN service instantiation, BGP peering, segment routing, and DCI provisioning.
  • Design service abstractions enabling self-service portal, Service Delivery, and Network Operations to deliver customer services without device-level interaction.
  • Maintain a vendor-abstraction layer and device driver framework spanning Arista, Cisco, and Fortinet, with Arista CloudVision Portal integrated as a southbound controller.
  • Implement state reconciliation, configuration drift detection, and automated remediation across the managed estate.
  • Extend the service catalog to cloud connectivity, including dynamic provisioning of hosted connections to AWS Direct Connect, Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute, and Google Cloud Interconnect.
  • Automate firewall policy provisioning, change, and validation, including rule lifecycle management and compliance verification.
  • Ensure platform support for the in-flight 400G backbone modernization, including automated turn-up, validation, and migration of customer services.
• Technical Leadership and Design Authority
  • Hold design authority for the network automation platform: set architectural standards, approve technical designs, and govern engineering practice.
  • Provide technical direction while remaining directly involved in delivery; serve as the escalation point for complex technical and architectural challenges.
  • Set and enforce expectations for code quality, reliability, security, testability, and operational readiness.
  • Mentor senior engineers and lead technical design review, growing the engineering capability of the function.
  • Define the platform support model and participate in on-call rotation and incident response for automation-driven change events.
• Platform Security, Governance, and Change Safety
  • Establish and enforce platform security posture, including secrets management (CyberArk, Conjur, Vault, or equivalent), RBAC design, credential lifecycle, mTLS, and least-privilege access.
  • Design change authorization, blast-radius control, dry-run, and rollback mechanisms for automated changes to production customer-facing services.
  • Produce audit and compliance evidence for automated change in support of customer, regulatory, and internal control requirements.
• Platform Strategy and Enterprise Alignment
  • Define and maintain the multi-year platform roadmap in alignment with Network Services, Service Delivery, and Product Management.
  • Drive integration with enterprise platforms, including ServiceNow for automated change records, CI enrichment, and CMDB correlation of network state.
  • Define extensibility patterns for AI-assisted network operations, including intent translation, closed-loop remediation, anomaly-driven workflows, and MCP-based tool integration.
  • Partner with IT Platform Engineering to extend enterprise observability into the network domain, ensuring automation outcomes are measurable and operationally supportable.
  • Represent network automation in cross-functional architecture reviews and executive-level program updates.
• Perform other management and technical duties as required for team and operational resilience. Travel may be required for team or project events.

Requirements

• 10+ years of relevant technical experience, including 3+ years in a principal, staff, or lead architect role holding design authority across a technical function.
• Platform / Software Engineering - 8+ years: end-to-end ownership of a production software platform; Python service development (Flask or equivalent), API contract design, data modeling, and release engineering.
• Network and Security Domain Depth - 8+ years: working expertise in MPLS L3VPN, BGP (including MP-BGP/VPNv4), EVPN-VXLAN, OSPF/IS-IS, Data Center Interconnect, IP transit, and multi-vendor firewall policy.
• Network Automation and Orchestration - 6+ years: network-as-code, intent-driven provisioning, state reconciliation, and drift remediation across multi-vendor estates.
• GitOps / CI/CD - 5+ years: pipeline authoring, automated validation and test gates, configuration-as-code delivery with tested rollback.
• Network Security Engineering - 4+ years: firewall and policy automation, RBAC design, secrets management, change authorization, and audit evidence.
• Technical Leadership - 4+ years: setting architectural standards, governing design review, and mentoring senior engineers.
• Data Engineering - 3+ years: document, graph, and timeseries data models for network state, source of truth, and automation metadata.
• Systems Engineering and NMS - 3+ years: Linux systems administration, network management systems, and operational tooling integration.
• Frontend Development - 2+ years: JavaScript with Angular or React and Bootstrap.
• Other training and experience may be substituted for the job requirements at the discretion of the manager.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience integrating network automation platforms with ServiceNow (Change, CMDB, Service Catalog).
• Experience operating automation at scale in service-provider, carrier, or multi-site enterprise environments.
• Experience applying AI/ML to operations, anomaly detection, event correlation, alert noise reduction, or agentic workflows.
• Experience with Open Telemetry, Prometheus, or Grafana-based observability integrated into automation workflows.
• Experience with Kubernetes, Helm, and container-based deployment of platform services.
• Experience mentoring or leading engineers in a hands-on technical role.

Pay

Annualized salary range offered for this position is estimated to be $200,000 - $230,000, depending on experience, location, and qualifications. Includes a discretionary annual bonus based on personal and company performance.

Benefits

• Medical, Telehealth, Dental, and Vision insurance
• 401(k) retirement plan
• Health Savings Accounts (HSA) and Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA)
• Life and AD&D insurance
• Short-term and Long-term disability insurance
• Flexible Paid Time Off