Senior Tech Lead, Network Automation Engineer

Freddie Mac•McLean, VA

7d•$161,000 - $241,000

About The Position

Our Observability, Software (SW) Development & Automation Enablement department is in search of a Senior Tech Lead, Network Automation Engineer with excellent time management skills and a consistent record of setting and meeting results-oriented goals! We are seeking a Senior Tech Lead with deep experience in network engineering, observability, and automation. This role is ideal for a technical leader who understands how large-scale network services operate and can translate that knowledge into resilient, software-defined solutions. You will serve as a bridge between traditional network engineering, observability, and NetDevOps enablement, bringing the technical depth to guide complex infrastructure decisions while advancing automation, integration, and operational maturity across the environment. In this role, you will lead the design of automation logic, observability integrations, and operational workflows that improve stability, scalability, and service assurance across the enterprise network environment. You will help shape the architecture and execution of pipelines, playbooks, integrations, and service patterns that support routing, load balancing, firewall services, telemetry collection, and cloud-connected infrastructure. You must be equally comfortable troubleshooting complex pipeline issues, setting technical direction, and partnering across teams to deliver secure, reliable, and supportable outcomes.

Requirements

College Degree or equivalent experience; advanced studies/degree preferred
10+ years of experience in network engineering, observability, infrastructure automation, platform engineering, SRE, or a closely related discipline, including senior-level ownership of complex technical solutions in large enterprise environments.
Expert-level proficiency with Ansible and Python is required, including the ability to design reusable automation logic, troubleshoot API and JSON interactions, and build practical integrations across enterprise platforms and services.
Extensive experience building, optimizing, and supporting reliable CI/CD and automation delivery pipelines, including Jenkins-based orchestration in high-availability environments.
Professional experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), platform hardening, patching, and secure operations, with the judgment to support stable production services and improve recoverability during incidents.
Strong understanding of enterprise networking and service architectures, including routing and switching concepts, load balancing, firewall services, telemetry, and infrastructure dependencies, so that automation logic accurately reflects the environment it supports.

Nice To Haves

Hands-on experience with modern observability and hybrid infrastructure ecosystems is strongly preferred, including technologies such as NetBrain, ThousandEyes, load balancing platforms, AWS, and infrastructure as code.

Responsibilities

Serve as a senior technical lead for network observability and automation enablement, guiding the design, optimization, and troubleshooting of enterprise Ansible and Jenkins workflows that support scalable, resilient infrastructure operations.
Identify, influence, and implement technology and process improvements that modernize network and observability operations, reduce manual effort, and improve accountability, consistency, and service quality.
Lead the integration of multi-vendor observability platforms and telemetry sources to expand visibility, automate diagnostics, improve topology awareness, and accelerate incident detection and remediation.
Provide senior-level technical leadership for platform stability, security, and operational readiness, including troubleshooting complex failures, improving recoverability, and supporting highly available services.
Architect and implement software-defined workflows for routing, load balancing, firewall policy, telemetry collection, and cloud-connected services, ensuring changes are safe, version-controlled, and aligned with enterprise standards.
Partner with network leadership, service owners, and peer engineering teams to solve complex business and technical challenges while elevating the team through standards, knowledge sharing, and a service-as-code mindset.