ROLE DETAILS
Location: London
Working arrangement: Hybrid – 1–2 days onsite per week
Contract: August 2026 to August 2027
Hours: 40 hours per week
Pay rate: £50 per hour PAYE
Occasional availability until approximately 7:00pm may be required to collaborate with US-based colleagues.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
- Design and develop automation, tooling and workflows for network provisioning, deployment and operations.
- Support the introduction of new routing, switching and optical platforms into the network.
- Build end-to-end test automation frameworks for network hardware, platforms and software.
- Use AI to generate, optimise and execute automated test suites at scale.
- Integrate automated testing and platform qualification into CI/CD pipelines.
- Conduct rigorous testing of new network products within lab environments.
- Partner with engineering teams to deploy qualified products into the production network.
- Troubleshoot complex issues across software, automation, networking and hardware.
- Develop reliable, scalable production code within Linux-based environments.
- Deliver technical projects independently against agreed milestones.
ESSENTIAL EXPERIENCE
- Seven or more years’ experience in software engineering, infrastructure engineering or test automation.
- Strong hands-on Python programming experience.
- Five or more years’ experience developing software on Linux-based operating systems.
- Three or more years’ experience building automation and tooling for network provisioning, deployment or operations.
- Three or more years’ experience developing and understanding network-device configurations for at least one major vendor, such as Cisco, Juniper, Arista, Nokia, Ciena or Infinera.
- Strong knowledge of TCP/IP, IPv4/IPv6 and SSH.
- Good understanding of routing technologies and protocols, including BGP, MPLS and IS-IS or similar.
- Knowledge of network services such as DHCP and DNS.
- Experience building test automation frameworks and integrating them into CI/CD pipelines.
- Hands-on experience using AI tools for coding, automation or test development.
- Ability to diagnose complex technical problems spanning software, networks and hardware.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
DESIRABLE EXPERIENCE
- Programming experience with Go, C++ or Java.
- Zero-touch provisioning, automated deployment, monitoring, remediation or software-push systems.
- Ansible, Puppet or Chef.
- Django and SQL databases.
- Network and software debugging, profiling and instrumentation.
- Developing and operating distributed systems at scale.
- Experience introducing new network platforms into large production environments.
- Previous experience within hyperscale technology, cloud infrastructure or telecommunications.
ABOUT YOU
You will combine strong network-engineering knowledge with substantial software-development and automation experience.
Your background may include positions such as Network Production Engineer, Network Automation Engineer, Network Software Engineer, Infrastructure Software Engineer or Network Development Engineer.
This opportunity is unlikely to suit someone whose experience is primarily limited to manual network configuration, ticket-based support or traditional BAU network operations without significant hands-on coding and automation responsibilities.