Senior Infrastructure Automation Engineer (Ansible)

Company Description
Software Mind develops solutions that make an impact for companies around the globe. Tech giants & unicorns, transformative projects, emerging technologies and limitless opportunities – these are a few words that describe an average day for us. Building cross-functional engineering teams that take ownership and crave more means we’re always on the lookout for talented people who bring passion and creativity to every project. Our culture embraces openness, acts with respect, shows grit & guts and combines employment with enjoyment.
Job Description
Project – the aim you’ll have
We are looking for a Senior Infrastructure Automation Engineer to help build an automation practice for a leading IT infrastructure provider in the Netherlands.
Automation is already being done, but it has grown in several directions at once - different approaches, different standards and different repository layouts running in parallel. A large part of this role is bringing that together into one practice the whole team works with.
You will join a 12+ person Polish engineering team responsible for maintaining the client's Linux and Windows estate and for delivering transformation projects on it. The environment carries a significant legacy footprint, built up over years of operations. At the same time we are building a completely new platform based on OpenStack, so the automation you create will cover both: keeping the existing estate running, and making sure the new platform is automated from day one rather than years later.
You will also have a software development team as a help, so when something needs to be properly engineered rather than scripted around, you will not be solving it alone.
Your first deliverable is continuous patching across Linux and Windows - moving the client from scheduled manual patching cycles to an automated, continuously running process. From there the practice expands into deployment automation, configuration management and process automation across the estate.
Role – How You’ll Contribute
Writing Ansible automation - playbooks, roles, modules and collections - this is the core, day-to-day work of the role
Help shape the automation practice: standards, repository structure and code review process, worked out together with the team
Patch management automation
Deployment automation
Configuration management
Systems and process automation
Project-driven infrastructure transformations - bring automation into the transformation projects the team delivers, so that what is built new is automated from the start
Support, configure and manage the automation platform
Automation-related code review and maintenance across the team
CI/CD configuration and management for automation code
Define and maintain the inventory and source of truth the automation runs against
Introduce testing for automation code, so changes can be released to a production estate with confidence
Work with engineers maintaining the estate to identify what should be automated next, and in what order
Share knowledge with the team so the practice is something everyone can work with
Produce and maintain the technical documentation that makes the practice usable by others
Qualifications
Expectations – the experience you need
Advanced knowledge and experience in using, configuring and maintaining automation platforms, preferably AAP/AWX
Understanding best practices for writing and maintaining Ansible code and repositories
Developing Ansible playbooks, roles and modules; maintaining Ansible collections
Using Ansible to manage systems and processes at scale
Advanced understanding of IaC principles
Practical experience with patch management across both Linux and Windows systems
Experience working across various Linux distributions
Programming skills, preferably Python
Solid Git and version control practice applied to automation code
Experience creating and maintaining technical documentation
English at C1 level - the working language with the client, including direct contact with client-side engineers and stakeholders
Additional Skills – The Edge You Have
OpenStack - we are building a new platform on it, so experience here is a strong plus
Experience consolidating scattered automation into a single, consistent practice
Experience setting technical standards and getting a team to adopt them
Good understanding of virtualization concepts
Puppet - part of the current estate, and consolidating it into Ansible is within the scope of this role
Experience migrating from another configuration management tool to Ansible
Testing frameworks for Ansible (e.g. Molecule)
Observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana)
IPAM, IAM
Basic networking, system firewalls, storage
Red Hat / Ansible certifications
Additional Information
What We Offer
Flexible and remote cooperation options
International projects with leading global clients
Travels related to international projects
Non-corporate atmosphere
Access* to language classes
Access* to knowledge-sharing initiatives
Access* to private healthcare and life insurance
Access* to multisport card
The availability and terms of individual benefits may vary depending on the chosen form of cooperation.
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Work arrangement
Yes