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Greater London, England, United Kingdom
Hybrid
Available
Job Title: Network Automation & OSS Designer
Experience Level: 08-15 Years
Job Summary
We are looking for an experienced Technical Solution Designer with 8 to 15 years of experience who combines deep network domain knowledge with strong hands-on expertise in automation frameworks, APIs, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native tooling. The ideal candidate will translate complex network and business requirements into scalable, standards-aligned architectural blueprints and reference designs that span multiple network domains.
Key Responsibilities/Job Description
Design end-to-end network automation solution architectures spanning orchestration, inventory, compliance, and observability layers.
Develop reference architectures and detailed solution blueprints for multi-domain network automation (IP/MPLS, optical, mobile RAN/Core, SD-WAN, cloud).
Define integration patterns for northbound and southbound APIs, resource-facing interfaces, and event-driven message exchanges.
Ensure solutions align with industry standards such as TM Forum Open APIs (TMF), IETF, ONF, ETSI NFV, and 3GPP.
Produce solution design artifacts including High-Level Designs (HLD), Low-Level Designs (LLD), interface control documents, and data models.
Architect automation workflows for network service orchestration, lifecycle management, and activation.
Design resource and service inventory models aligned with TMF SID/eTOM frameworks.
Define compliance and configuration governance strategies leveraging Config-as-Code and GitOps principles.
Drive the adoption of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tooling (Terraform, Ansible, Helm) for network resource provisioning.
Design Kafka-based event streaming and messaging architectures for real-time network telemetry and automation triggers.
Define observability strategies covering metrics, logs, traces, and network telemetry pipelines.
Architect AIOps capabilities including closed-loop automation, anomaly detection, and predictive analytics for network operations.
Integrate OSS observability with cloud-native monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Elasticsearch).
Lead design of intent-based networking and policy-driven automation frameworks.
Collaborate with product managers, network engineers, platform teams, and DevOps practitioners to drive solution design to implementation.
Present architectural proposals to senior technical and business stakeholders, driving consensus and sign-off.
Guide and mentor development teams on best practices for network automation and cloud-native OSS development.
Evaluate and recommend open-source tools, frameworks, and vendor solutions relevant to network automation.
Contribute to OSS community, standards bodies, and internal knowledge repositories.
Required Skills & Experience:
8–15 years of experience in network automation, OSS solution design, or network architecture roles.
Proven expertise in designing solutions for network orchestration and activation platforms.
Strong knowledge of network resource APIs and interfaces: NETCONF/YANG, RESTCONF, gNMI/gRPC, OpenConfig, SNMP.
Experience with TMF Open APIs (TMF641, TMF639, TMF638, TMF640, TMF642, TMF652) for service and resource management.
Hands-on experience with Config-as-Code and Infrastructure-as-Code tools: Ansible, Terraform, Helm, GitOps workflows.
Strong understanding of Apache Kafka: topic design, partitioning, consumer groups, schema registry, and Kafka Streams.
Experience designing event-driven microservices and publish-subscribe integration patterns for telemetry and automation.
Solid understanding of SDN principles, controllers (ONOS, ODL, Nokia NSP, Cisco NSO), and programmable networking.
Good knowledge of NFV frameworks (ETSI NFV MANO, VNF/CNF lifecycle management).
Understanding of AIOps platforms and closed-loop automation design for network operations.
Experience with observability tooling: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, Loki, ELK Stack.
Knowledge of ML/AI model integration for anomaly detection, root-cause analysis, and predictive network management.
Strong grasp of TM Forum frameworks: eTOM, TAM, SID, and Open Digital Architecture (ODA).
Familiarity with IETF network automation standards (RFC 8040, RFC 6241, YANG data models).
Understanding of ONF TAPI, MEF LSO standards, and 3GPP OSS interfaces for mobile networks.
Prior experience working in a telco, CSP, or large enterprise network engineering environment.
Must have CCNA or equivalent network certification
Nice to have skills:
Hands-on development experience with Python, Go, or Java for network automation tooling.
Understanding of zero-touch provisioning (ZTP), self-healing networks, and autonomous network operations.
Experience with digital twin concepts for network simulation and what-if analysis.
Exposure to intent-based networking (IBN) and policy frameworks (OPA, TOSCA).
