POSITION OVERVIEW
We are looking for an experienced and technically exceptional Technical Lead – Automation to own our infrastructure automation practice and lead a team of automation engineers. This role sits at the intersection of infrastructure engineering, platform development, and DevOps — responsible for designing, building, and governing the frameworks that automate our entire IT estate: provisioning, configuration management, patching, compliance, and self-healing operations.
The ideal candidate brings deep, battle-tested expertise in Terraform (Infrastructure-as-Code) and Ansible (configuration management and automation), combined with strong scripting skills in Python and Bash, and meaningful exposure to ServiceNow development — particularly integrating Ansible Automation Platform and Terraform workflows into ServiceNow ITSM/ITOM for closed-loop, event-driven, and catalogue-triggered automation. You will lead by example — writing production-quality code, setting engineering standards, mentoring the team, and driving automation-first culture across the organisation.
THREE CORE AUTOMATION PILLARS
️
Terraform
Infrastructure-as-Code-
Multi-cloud IaC (AWS / Azure / GCP)
-
Terraform Cloud / Enterprise
-
Module library design & governance
-
State management & remote backends
-
Workspace & environment strategy
-
Terratest automated testing
-
Sentinel / OPA policy-as-code
-
Drift detection & remediation
Ansible
Configuration & Automation-
Ansible Automation Platform (AAP)
-
Playbook & role development
-
Dynamic inventory (cloud / CMDB)
-
Molecule testing framework
-
Event-Driven Ansible (EDA)
-
AAP job templates & workflows
-
AWX / Ansible Galaxy / Hub
-
RHEL / Linux config management
️
ServiceNow Dev
ITSM / ITOM Integration-
Flow Designer & Integration Hub
-
Ansible & Terraform spoke config
-
ITSM-triggered automation flows
-
ITOM Orchestration runbooks
-
CMDB-driven dynamic inventory
-
Service Catalogue provisioning
-
GlideScript scripting exposure
-
REST API / MID Server integration
AUTOMATION DELIVERY LIFECYCLE
0
Phase 1
Design & Plan-
Automation scope mapping
-
IaC module architecture
-
Ansible role structure design
-
SNOW integration design
-
Toolchain selection
Infrastructure / DevOps / Automation
Department
Phase 3
Test & Validate-
Terratest framework testing
-
Molecule role testing
-
Integration pipeline gates
-
ATF ServiceNow testing
-
Drift & compliance checks
Phase 4
Deploy & Operate-
GitOps production rollout
-
AAP job template execution
-
SNOW catalogue publishing
-
EDA event-driven triggers
-
Observability & alerting
HOW SUCCESS IS MEASURED
3
Infrastructure / DevOps / Automation
Department
< 2 hr
Mean time to provision new infrastructure
Zero
Configuration drift in managed estate
100%
IaC coverage of new infra deployments
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
️
Terraform – Infrastructure-as-Code Leadership-
Architect and maintain the enterprise Terraform module library — reusable, versioned, and tested modules for compute, networking, storage, identity, and security resources across AWS, Azure, and on-premises environments.
-
Define and enforce Terraform workspace and environment strategy — managing dev, staging, and production state isolation, remote backend configuration (S3 / Azure Blob / Terraform Cloud), and state locking.
-
Implement Terraform Cloud / Enterprise workspaces — configuring VCS-driven runs, remote execution, team access controls, and policy enforcement using Sentinel or Open Policy Agent (OPA).
-
Lead Terraform code quality governance — mandatory peer review, automated linting (tflint, checkov), security scanning, and Terratest test coverage gates in CI/CD pipelines.
-
Design and implement Terraform drift detection workflows — scheduled plan-only runs, drift alerting to ServiceNow incidents, and automated remediation via Ansible for configuration variance.
-
Develop and maintain Terraform provider integrations for Cisco infrastructure, VMware vSphere, Nutanix, Cohesity, and cloud-native services beyond standard HashiCorp providers.
-
Mentor the team on Terraform best practices — DRY module design, variable hierarchy, locals vs. variables, lifecycle meta-arguments, and managing complex resource dependencies.
Ansible – Configuration Management & Automation Platform-
Design, develop, and maintain enterprise Ansible roles and collections following Ansible best practices — idempotency, handler usage, tag strategy, variable precedence, and Jinja2 templating.
-
Own and administer Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) — configuring job templates, workflow job templates, inventories, credentials, RBAC policies, and notification integrations.
-
Implement Event-Driven Ansible (EDA) rulebook configurations — triggering automated remediation, compliance enforcement, and patching workflows from ServiceNow events, monitoring alerts, and webhook sources.
-
Build and maintain dynamic inventory plugins integrating Ansible with Terraform state files, ServiceNow CMDB, AWS EC2, Azure Resource Manager, VMware vCenter, and Nutanix Prism Central.
-
Lead the Linux patching automation programme — scheduling, rolling update strategies, pre/post validation playbooks, rollback logic, and integration with Red Hat Satellite for RHEL lifecycle management.
-
Develop Molecule test scenarios for all Ansible roles — Docker and Vagrant drivers, assert-based verification, and integration with CI/CD pipeline quality gates.
-
Publish and govern the internal Ansible Galaxy / Private Automation Hub — curating certified content, managing collection versions, and ensuring all automation code is discoverable and reusable.
ServiceNow Integration & Automation Development-
Design and implement ServiceNow Integration Hub spokes for Ansible Automation Platform and Terraform Cloud — enabling ITSM-triggered infrastructure provisioning and configuration change workflows.
-
Build ServiceNow Service Catalogue items that trigger Terraform provisioning (VM, cloud resources, network segments) and Ansible configuration jobs as fulfilment workflow steps.
-
Develop ServiceNow Flow Designer flows for closed-loop automation — ServiceNow incident triggers Event-Driven Ansible remediation, updates CMDB CI, and auto-resolves the incident on success.
-
Configure ServiceNow ITOM Orchestration runbooks that invoke Ansible playbooks via AAP REST APIs for automated server remediation, service restarts, and compliance enforcement.
-
Maintain CMDB accuracy through automation — Ansible playbooks and Terraform outputs that auto-populate CI attributes, update relationships, and trigger Discovery re-runs post-provisioning.
-
Write GlideScript Business Rules and Script Includes to process Terraform plan outputs, Ansible job results, and automation audit trails within the ServiceNow platform.
-
Build custom ServiceNow dashboards tracking automation adoption metrics — catalogue consumption, Ansible job success rates, Terraform provisioning times, and automation-driven incident reduction.
CI/CD Pipeline Engineering & GitOps-
Design and maintain CI/CD pipeline frameworks for infrastructure code — integrating Terraform plan/apply stages, Ansible lint and molecule test gates, and ServiceNow ATF validation into GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins pipelines.
-
Implement GitOps workflows for infrastructure management — branch-per-environment strategies, pull request approval gates, automated plan previews, and merge-triggered production deployments.
-
Configure pipeline security scanning stages — Checkov, tfsec, Snyk IaC, and Ansible security scan integrations — enforcing security baselines on all infrastructure code before deployment.
-
Build shared pipeline templates and reusable CI/CD components (GitHub Actions composite actions, GitLab CI templates) that automation engineers consume across all infrastructure projects.
-
Integrate infrastructure pipelines with monitoring and observability tools — post-deploy smoke tests, Datadog / Prometheus metric validation, and automated rollback triggers on failure.
-
Manage Git repository strategy — mono-repo vs. poly-repo decisions, branching conventions, tag-based release management, and Git hooks for pre-commit quality enforcement.
Scripting, Toolchain & Platform Development-
Write production-quality Python scripts for infrastructure automation — Terraform state parsing, Ansible inventory generation, CMDB API integration, cost reporting, and compliance data collection.
-
Develop and maintain Bash automation scripts for Linux system operations, pipeline toolchain bootstrapping, and MID Server maintenance tasks.
-
Build and maintain REST API integration utilities for orchestrating workflows across Terraform Cloud, Ansible AAP, ServiceNow, and cloud provider APIs.
-
Evaluate, select, and champion automation toolchain additions — assessing tools such as Pulumi, Crossplane, ArgoCD, or Backstage Developer Portal for infrastructure capability uplift.
-
Develop internal developer portal integrations (Backstage / ServiceNow Service Portal) providing self-service infrastructure provisioning with embedded governance guardrails.
️ Cloud & Hybrid Infrastructure Automation-
Lead automation of cloud infrastructure across AWS and Azure — VPCs, subnets, security groups, IAM roles, EKS/AKS clusters, managed databases, and storage accounts — all provisioned via Terraform.
-
Implement cloud compliance automation — AWS Config rules, Azure Policy, and OPA policy-as-code enforced through Terraform Sentinel ensuring all cloud resources meet security baselines.
-
Design and automate hybrid cloud onboarding workflows — new environment provisioning from Terraform infra through Ansible OS configuration, ServiceNow CMDB population, and monitoring agent deployment in a single pipeline.
-
Automate cloud cost governance — Terraform tagging policies, cost anomaly alerting integrations, and automated right-sizing recommendations surfaced via ServiceNow catalogue requests.
Technical Leadership & Team Development-
Lead and mentor a team of 3–8 automation engineers — setting technical direction, conducting code reviews, running architecture sessions, and fostering a culture of quality, reuse, and continuous improvement.
-
Define automation engineering standards — coding conventions, module design patterns, testing requirements, documentation standards, and peer review processes enforced via pipeline gates.
-
Run regular automation guild sessions — showcasing new capabilities, sharing lessons learned from production incidents, and promoting knowledge sharing across infrastructure teams.
-
Partner with network, HCI, storage, Linux, ITSM, and cloud teams to identify automation opportunities, eliminate manual toil, and embed automation into every engineering workflow.
-
Represent the automation practice in architecture review boards, change advisory boards, and technology steering committees — contributing automation strategy to enterprise-wide initiatives.
-
Build the automation team's skills roadmap — identifying training needs, sponsoring certifications, and creating internal learning pathways for HashiCorp, Red Hat, and ServiceNow platforms.
AUTOMATION TOOLCHAIN
70
Infrastructure / DevOps / Automation
Department
Ansible AAP
️
ServiceNow
Head of Infrastructure / CTO
Reports To
Linux / Bash
GitLab / GitHub
️
AWS / Azure
Kubernetes
Vault (HashiCorp)
Jira / Confluence
Datadog / Grafana
Packer / Vagrant
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
Education & Experience-
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Network Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
-
7–12 years of enterprise IT experience with a minimum of 4 years in an infrastructure automation or DevOps engineering role.
-
Demonstrated production expertise in Terraform — writing reusable modules, managing state at scale, and implementing CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure code.
-
Hands-on production expertise in Ansible — developing complex playbooks and roles, administering Ansible Automation Platform, and implementing Event-Driven Ansible.
-
Proven technical leadership experience — mentoring engineers, owning coding standards, leading architecture decisions, and driving automation adoption across infrastructure teams.
-
Meaningful ServiceNow development or integration experience — particularly connecting Ansible AAP and Terraform with ServiceNow ITSM/ITOM workflows.
9
Head of Infrastructure / CTO
Reports To
0
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
-
Experience with Crossplane or Pulumi as alternative or complementary IaC frameworks alongside Terraform for platform engineering workloads.
-
Hands-on knowledge of Backstage Developer Portal for building internal developer platforms (IDPs) with self-service infrastructure provisioning templates.
-
Familiarity with GitOps frameworks (ArgoCD, Flux) for continuous delivery of infrastructure and application configurations in Kubernetes environments.
-
Experience building Ansible EDA rulebooks that consume ServiceNow events, Prometheus alerts, and monitoring webhooks for fully automated closed-loop remediation.
-
Understanding of FinOps practices — integrating cloud cost data into Terraform outputs and ServiceNow dashboards for real-time spend visibility and anomaly alerting.
-
Exposure to AI/ML infrastructure provisioning patterns — GPU cluster automation, MLOps pipeline infrastructure, or LLM deployment toolchains via Terraform and Ansible.
