Senior Specialist, Intelligent Automation

UDA Developer Requirements For Automation Role
P1 — Senior Specialist, Intelligent Automation
Python, VBA, Power Platform & Gen AI | Development & Maintenance
The requirement is for a Python automation developer and Intelligent Automation Senior Specialist with 3+ years of experience who builds and maintains attended business process automations, delivering well-defined development work and keeping the live automation portfolio running reliably. This Python-first developer brings good Selenium and web automation skills, working VBA/Excel competencies, foundational exposure to Power Automate and Power Apps, practical data processing capabilities (Excel, PDF, OCR), and hands-on prompt engineering skills to apply Gen AI within automations using established team patterns.
Alongside new development, a significant part of this role is maintenance and support — monitoring live automations, triaging and fixing failures, adapting automations when target applications or websites change, and delivering minor enhancements and change requests within agreed SLAs. Working under the guidance of the senior developers, this is someone who follows team standards, makes good use of reusable components, resolves routine issues independently, and escalates complex or higher-risk issues with clear diagnostics. This is a dependable, hands-on developer who is building towards greater ownership and autonomy.
Core Technical Requirements
Python Development
Good proficiency in Python 3.x with 3+ years hands-on experience
Working understanding of OOP principles, error handling, and modular code design
Experience packaging Python applications into executables (PyInstaller, cx_Freeze, auto-py-to-exe)
Familiarity with virtual environments and dependency management (pip, requirements.txt)
Ability to read, debug, and extend existing Python codebases written by others
Selenium & Web Automation
Hands-on Selenium WebDriver experience, with the ability to work within existing automation frameworks (e.g. Page Object Model)
Experience handling dynamic content, iframes, pop-ups, and alerts
Working command of explicit/implicit waits and locator strategies (XPath, CSS selectors), including updating broken locators when target sites change
Exposure to headless browser operations
Familiarity with Beautiful Soup and Requests; exposure to Scrapy is a plus
Power Platform — Power Automate & Power Apps
Foundational experience building and maintaining Power Automate cloud and desktop flows with Microsoft 365, SharePoint, and common connectors
Exposure to Power Apps canvas apps, with the ability to make changes to existing apps that front automation workflows
Awareness of when a use case suits Power Platform vs. Python/RPA, applying guidance from senior team members
Awareness of Power Platform governance basics (DLP policies, environments), working within IT-defined guardrails
Data Processing & File Handling
Excel manipulation (openpyxl, pandas, xlwings, xlsxwriter)
PDF processing (PyPDF2, pdfplumber); exposure to tabula-py or camelot
Exposure to OCR implementation (Tesseract, pytesseract, EasyOCR, or cloud OCR APIs)
Data transformation and cleansing with pandas
VBA & Excel Macros
Working knowledge of VBA for Excel automation; able to read, debug, and maintain existing macros
Familiarity with the Excel object model: Workbooks, Worksheets, Ranges
Exposure to integrating Python and VBA via xlwings or win32com (pywin32)
Awareness of macro security and digital signature requirements
Exposure to Excel events, user forms, and custom functions (UDFs) is a plus
Gen AI Integration & Prompt Engineering
Hands-on prompt engineering skills for data extraction, classification, and summarisation use cases
Familiarity with prompting techniques such as few-shot, chain-of-thought, and role-based prompting
Awareness of hallucination risks and basic output-validation approaches
Ability to write prompts that return structured outputs (JSON, CSV), using and maintaining the team's existing prompt templates
Basic understanding of temperature, token limits, and parameter settings
Hands-on experience consuming RESTful APIs (authentication, request/response handling, error handling)
Production Support & Maintenance
Performs root-cause analysis and applies break-fix changes for issues such as application/UI changes, locator breakages, input data variations, and access or credential errors
Delivers minor enhancements and change requests to existing automations, following the team's change and release process
Logs, updates, and closes incidents and service requests in Azure DevOps within agreed SLAs
Performs regression testing after fixes and supports UAT with business users
Keeps runbooks, known-error notes, and support documentation up to date
Professional Competencies
Ownership & Delivery
Owns delivery of assigned automations and support tickets end-to-end, from requirement clarification through testing and handover
Works from defined requirements and designs, seeking clarification early where requirements are unclear
Attempts a solution first when blocked, escalating to the senior developers with clear diagnostics and the options already tried
Communicates status, risks, and effort estimates accurately and on time
Good documentation habits for code, fixes, and user guides
Learning & Team Collaboration
Actively learns from senior developers through pairing and code reviews, and acts on feedback
Shares fixes, learnings, and recurring issues with the wider team
Supports peers and new joiners with practical, day-to-day guidance where possible
Works effectively with business users when gathering issue details or supporting UAT
Version Control & Collaboration
Working Git/GitHub skills: branching, committing, pull requests, and resolving simple merge conflicts
Participates in code reviews and incorporates review feedback
Follows team branching and repository standards
Code Quality & Best Practices
Follows coding standards (PEP 8, logging, exception handling, debugging practices)
Uses config files and environment variables for sensitive data; never hardcodes credentials
Uses the team's reusable functions, classes, and modules, and contributes to them where appropriate
Flags technical debt and recurring failures observed during maintenance work

Work arrangement
No