Automation Solution Consultant - Senior
Must Haves:
- 7+ years of hands-on Ansible automation experience in production environments.
- 7+ years Windows Server 2012, 2019 and 2022
- 7+ years PowerShell (Windows automation)
- 7+ years Bash or shell scripting (Linux automation)
- 7+ years Enterprise Linux distributions (RHEL, Ubuntu, or equivalent)
Location: Remote – 4 p.m. and 12:00 am shift (preference) or 4:00 am to 12:00 pm shift
Public Sector Experience: Nice to Have
Description
We are seeking a Senior Ansible Automation Engineer to lead automation initiatives within a large enterprise IT operations environment. This role is responsible for designing and implementing automation solutions that improve consistency, security, and operational efficiency across enterprise Windows and Linux server infrastructure.
The successful candidate will combine deep Ansible automation expertise with advanced systems administration experience across Windows Server (2019/2022) and enterprise Linux platforms, supporting large-scale operational environments with strong governance, reliability, and compliance requirements.
This is a hands-on technical role focused on reducing manual operational work through automation while ensuring stability, security, and scalability of production systems.
Key Responsibilities
Enterprise Automation & Standardization
- Design, develop, and maintain enterprise-grade automation using Ansible across Windows and Linux environments.
- Build reusable Ansible roles, playbooks, inventories, and automation frameworks aligned with enterprise standards.
- Establish automation governance, coding standards, and reusable automation patterns, while maintaining source-controlled automation repositories and documentation.
- Automate provisioning, configuration management, compliance enforcement, and operational workflows, reducing manual administration across the enterprise.
- Lead the transition from manual administration to automation-first operations.
- Design and implement phased patch deployment strategies (Dev Test UAT Production) ensuring environment promotion discipline.
- Automate end-to-end patch lifecycle management using Microsoft Endpoint Configuration Manager APIs, PowerShell modules, WSUS integration, and ADR (Automatic Deployment Rules).
- Automate maintenance window execution, change sequencing, pre- and post-deployment validation, rollback procedures, and compliance verification aligned with enterprise ITIL processes.
- Build approval-gated promotion pipelines with reporting dashboards to ensure auditability, production stability, and compliance adherence.
- Optimize patch baselines, supersedence management, deployment scheduling, and automated remediation workflows for large-scale server environments.
Key Responsibilities
Monitoring & Event Management
- Design and implement event-driven automation workflows triggered by enterprise monitoring platforms (e.g., Micro Focus Operations Bridge or equivalent).
- Integrate monitoring systems with automation frameworks and ITSM platforms (e.g., ServiceNow) using REST APIs and webhooks.
- Develop automated remediation runbooks for threshold-based and binary alerts to reduce manual NOC intervention.
- Implement closed-loop automation, including automated ticket creation, status updates, and event resolution feedback.
- Define alert correlation, suppression logic, and escalation workflows aligned with enterprise operational standards.
- Continuously optimize event noise reduction and improve mean time to resolution (MTTR) through intelligent automation.
Windows Server Infrastructure Administration
- Provide senior-level administration and support for Windows Server 2019 and 2022 environments.
- Manage server lifecycle activities including provisioning, configuration, patching, upgrades, and decommissioning.
- Administer and troubleshoot:
- Active Directory and Group Policy
- DNS, DHCP, and core enterprise services
- File and application services
- Implement OS hardening aligned with enterprise security standards.
- Support backup, disaster recovery, and high availability solutions.
Linux Systems Administration
- Administer enterprise Linux environments (e.g., Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky Linux, Ubuntu, or equivalent).
- Perform installation, configuration, patch management, and system upgrades.
- Manage system services, package management, and OS security configurations.
- Implement automation for configuration enforcement and system compliance.
- Troubleshoot performance, networking, and system-level issues.
- Support enterprise authentication integrations (LDAP/AD integration preferred).
Operational Excellence
- Automate routine operational tasks including patching, configuration validation, and remediation.
- Reduce configuration drift through automated compliance enforcement.
- Develop operational runbooks and automated recovery procedures.
- Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement initiati