Network Automation & OSS Designer

Job Title: Network Automation & OSS Designer
Experience Level: 08-15 Years
3+ months contract + Rolling

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).