Automation Consultant

About the role

Lead the automation track of a multi year patch management programme in a financial services environment. Ansible Automation Platform is the orchestration layer for patch selection, sequencing, change control and evidence. Design the orchestration architecture, lead implementation engineers and hand over a working framework to the internal team.

Architecture and design

• Own the Ansible framework architecture: discovery, prioritisation, approval, sequencing, execution and verification, with one evidence trail across platforms.

• Author framework sections of high level and low level designs and support architecture review boards.

• Shape the intended state approach for agentless targets using NetBox or policy as code.

Build and technical leadership

• Lead automation and ServiceNow engineers.

• Deliver workflow templates for ServiceNow change gates, owner approvals, five ring promotion logic and evidence to Splunk.

• Set standards for execution environments, collections and content as code in GitHub Enterprise and JFrog, aligned to coding standards.

• Drive agentless canaries, including ESXi host evacuation and patching and network platform firmware updates.

• Build Robot Framework test coverage and own component, integration and security testing for automation content.

Partnership and handover

• Coordinate with the security team on integration points and shared approval paths.

• Work with platform owners on cluster aware sequencing, rollback and validation criteria.

• Mentor automation engineers to author playbooks independently; contribute to SOPs, recorded training and supervised knowledge transfer.

• Build reusable patterns for databases, middleware, storage, firmware, AIX and Solaris.

Required experience

• At least 10 years in infrastructure automation, including at least 8 years of hands on production Ansible experience.

• Deep Ansible Automation Platform expertise in workflow templates, execution environments, automation mesh across segmented networks, RBAC and credential plugins.

• Prior technical lead or architect experience on an enterprise automation programme.

• Python, Git, REST APIs and CI pipelines.

• Ansible Automation Platform integration with ServiceNow Change and CMDB.

• Patch or change orchestration at scale, including rolling and cluster aware sequencing, maintenance windows and rollback.

• Delivery in a regulated industry, preferably financial services, covering change control, separation of duties and evidence suitable for audit.

• Clear written design documentation for architecture and change review boards.

Preferred

• Red Hat certifications: RHCE, EX374 or EX467.

• Agentless patching for VMware ESXi and vCenter, Nutanix and network operating systems including Cisco, F5, Palo Alto and Juniper.

• CyberArk, PingID, Splunk and Datadog.

• NetBox or Nautobot as a source of truth.