Senior Software Engineer - Network Automation Architect

Job description

Who are we? Equinix is the world’s digital infrastructure company®, shortening the path to connectivity to enable the innovations that enrich our work, life and planet. A place where tech thinkers and future builders turn bold ideas into breakthrough experiences, we welcome your unique perspective. Help us challenge assumptions, uncover bias, and remove barriers—because progress starts with fresh ideas. You’ll find belonging, purpose, and a team that welcomes you—because when you feel valued, you’re empowered to do your best work. Senior Staff Software Engineer / Network Automation Architect Build the Next Generation of Network Automation We are seeking a highly experienced Senior Staff Software Engineer / Network Automation Architect to design and build the next generation of software that operates a large, globally distributed, multi-vendor production network. This opportunity is designed for an engineer with a distinctive combination of experience: You began your career working directly with routers, switches, routing protocols, network configurations, and production incidents. You transitioned from traditional network engineering into software engineering and Python development. You have designed and built network automation systems, not just individual scripts or playbooks. You understand how software decisions affect live network devices and know how to automate change safely. You want to remain deeply hands-on in coding, architecture, testing, and platform design. This is a senior individual-contributor role. Approximately 99% of the position is focused on coding and design. Although you will provide technical leadership and mentor engineers, this is not a people-management position. The OpportunityYou will own the architecture and engineering direction of a new network infrastructure automation platform. The platform will automate provisioning, configuration, validation, compliance, state collection, and safe change execution across Cisco, Juniper, Palo Alto, Arista, and other network environments. A key focus of the role is moving beyond the current automation platform and creating new, modern capabilities using Python, Ansible, relational data models, APIs, background workers, testing frameworks, and AI-assisted engineering tools. You will help build this platform from its early stages, define its architecture, establish its engineering standards, and write the production code that brings it to life. This is not a traditional network architecture role, a pre-sales position, or a scripting-only automation role. We need an engineer who understands both sides of the problem: how production networks operate and how reliable software platforms are designed, developed, tested, deployed, and maintained. What You Will DeliverIn this role, you will: Architect and build a new network infrastructure automation platform from the ground up. Develop production-quality Python services, REST APIs, background workers, schedulers, device drivers, and data-access layers. Expand zero-touch provisioning across a large, multi-vendor network environment. Translate network engineering standards and operational intent into testable, maintainable software. Create reusable automation patterns for Cisco and Juniper platforms while accounting for vendor-specific behaviors. Design relational data models using MariaDB or a comparable production database. Build Ansible-based automation capabilities, including inventory, reusable content, execution controls, and integration with platform services. Automate configuration generation, device onboarding, state collection, compliance verification, drift detection, firewall operations, and safe network change. Establish testing, validation, approval, deployment, and rollback requirements for software-driven network changes. Introduce responsible uses of AI-assisted development and agent-based workflows while maintaining human control over device-affecting actions. Reduce technical debt and modernize existing Python components without compromising production stability. Establish software engineering standards and mentor senior and junior engineers. Communicate technical roadmaps, platform health, delivery risks, and architecture decisions to engineering and senior leadership. What You Will DoPlatform Architecture and Greenfield DevelopmentOwn the end-to-end architecture of the network automation platform. Define service boundaries, APIs, background processing, device integrations, relational data models, operator workflows, and deployment patterns. Help create the platform from an early-stage design or codebase through production implementation. Determine when automation capabilities should be built within a shared platform and when a separate service or workflow is more appropriate. Establish modular architecture patterns that support maintainability, testing, scalability, and future expansion. Lead architecture and design reviews while remaining personally responsible for substantial portions of the implementation. Develop a technical roadmap that balances greenfield platform creation, current operational needs, and responsible modernization of legacy components. Network Infrastructure AutomationDesign and develop automation for Cisco and Juniper routers and switches, with additional support for Palo Alto, Arista, and other network platforms. Build automation for Day-0, Day-1, and Day-2 network operations. Develop zero-touch provisioning workflows for new devices and sites. Automate network configuration generation, rendering, validation, comparison, deployment, and post-change verification. Build device-state collection, polling, compliance, baseline-management, and configuration drift capabilities. Design firewall and out-of-band network infrastructure automation where appropriate. Translate network standards involving VLANs, LACP, BGP, OSPF, IP addressing, subnetting, and management connectivity into reusable software. Account for vendor-specific configuration models, commit behavior, rollback mechanisms, APIs, and failure conditions. Python Software EngineeringDevelop maintainable, production-quality Python rather than isolated or task-specific scripts. Build REST APIs, services, background workers, schedulers, integration layers, device drivers, and reusable Python packages. Apply software engineering practices involving modular design, interfaces, error handling, structured logging, dependency management, secure credential handling, and code review. Refactor legacy Python components using incremental and well-tested modernization strategies. Diagnose performance and reliability issues involving network round trips, concurrent device operations, database contention, worker capacity, and batch execution. Design systems that support idempotency, bounded concurrency, appropriate retries, backpressure, and recovery from partial failures. Establish coding standards and help other engineers improve the quality, readability, testing, and maintainability of their work. Ansible Platform EngineeringDesign and develop Ansible-based network automation, including inventories, roles, collections, modules, plugins, and execution workflows. Integrate Ansible with Python services, relational data, source-of-truth systems, approval processes, and operator-facing workflows. Define standards for reusable automation instead of creating vendor-specific or site-specific playbooks that cannot scale. Establish execution controls that support dry runs, configuration differences, approvals, staged deployment, post-change validation, and rollback. Improve the observability, auditability, and repeatability of Ansible-driven operations. Support Ansible Automation Platform or comparable centralized orchestration capabilities where appropriate. Data Architecture and MariaDBDesign and maintain relational data models for devices, interfaces, sites, inventory, network intent, observed state, automation jobs, approvals, and compliance exceptions. Devel