Network Automation & AI Engineer
Location: Remote
Duration: 12+ Months
We are seeking an experienced Network Automation & AI Engineer for a contract engagement supporting a large-scale global enterprise network. This hands-on role will use network automation, AI, analytics, and cloud technologies to improve how the network is operated, monitored, troubleshot, and managed.
Environment: approximately 7,650 retail locations across the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil, plus corporate facilities and distribution centers. Core technologies include Cisco SD-WAN, Cisco routing and switching, Cisco Meraki wireless, and Google Cloud Platform (Google Cloud Platform).
Objective: move Network Engineering and Operations from manual, reactive processes toward automated, proactive, exception-based network management. This is not a traditional NOC role or a pure software-development position; the ideal candidate combines strong enterprise networking knowledge with practical automation, cloud, and AI development skills.
Key Responsibilities
Identify and automate repetitive, high-volume Network Engineering and Operations activities.
Build production-ready automation for configuration, validation, monitoring, troubleshooting, remediation, and reporting.
Integrate Cisco, Meraki, Google Cloud Platform, monitoring-platform, and other enterprise APIs into automation workflows.
Develop proactive exception-management capabilities that identify poorly performing locations, circuits, devices, wireless environments, and cloud connections.
Analyze and correlate telemetry, alarms, logs, configurations, incidents, and performance data to surface meaningful issues and reduce alarm noise.
Apply generative AI/LLMs to troubleshooting, configuration and incident analysis, documentation, and operational decision support.
Use Claude Code or comparable AI-assisted development tools to accelerate scripting, API integration, testing, documentation, and automation development.
Develop network-health reporting, anomaly detection, configuration/compliance validation, and safe automated remediation for appropriate low-risk conditions.
Document solutions and transfer code, frameworks, practices, and knowledge to the internal Network Engineering team.
Required Skills
Enterprise networking: routing, switching, WAN/LAN/WLAN, BGP, OSPF, TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VPNs
Cisco routing/switching, Cisco SD-WAN, and Cisco Meraki
Python, REST APIs, JSON/YAML, Git, and network automation frameworks
Ansible or similar automation technologies
Network telemetry, monitoring platforms, SNMP, syslog, APIs, and operational data
Cloud networking and hybrid enterprise/cloud architectures
Production automation at enterprise scale with appropriate validation and controls
Strongly Preferred Skills
Google Cloud Platform networking and APIs, including VPCs, routing, firewall policies, VPN/Interconnect, Cloud Monitoring, and Cloud Logging
Claude Code or similar AI-assisted development tools
Generative AI, LLMs, AI agents, anomaly detection, or ML applied to infrastructure/operations
Large geographically distributed enterprise networks
Dashboards, health scores, proactive monitoring, or exception-management solutions