Job Title: Network Automation & AI Engineer
Location: Raleigh, NC (Hybrid preferred)
Industry: Banking/Financial Services
Type: Contract – 12 months
Overview
We are seeking a highly skilled Network Automation & AI Engineer to join our technology organization within a leading financial institution. This role will focus on modernizing network operations through automation, programmability, telemetry, and applied AI/ML, helping drive reliability, scalability, and security across mission-critical banking infrastructure.
You will work closely with network engineering, security, cloud, and platform teams to build intelligent, self-healing network systems that support a highly regulated, always-on environment.
Key Responsibilities
Network Automation & Engineering
- Design, build, and maintain automation frameworks for network provisioning, configuration management, and compliance (Ansible, Python, Terraform, APIs).
- Develop automation workflows across routing, switching, firewall, SD-WAN, load balancing, and cloud networking environments.
- Integrate automation into CI/CD pipelines using tools such as Git, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or similar.
- Support multi-vendor environments (e.g., Cisco, Palo Alto, Juniper, Arista, F5, Fortinet)
AI / Intelligence-Driven Networking
- Apply AI/ML concepts to network operations use cases such as:
- Anomaly detection
- Performance optimization
- Predictive capacity planning
- Incident correlation
- Root cause analysis
- Leverage telemetry, NetFlow, SNMP, logs, and streaming data to build data-driven insights.
- Work with data platforms and tools (e.g., Elastic, Splunk, Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, custom pipelines).
Observability & Telemetry
- Design and enhance network observability platforms using streaming telemetry (gRPC, model-driven telemetry), APIs, and logging pipelines.
- Build dashboards and analytics to provide real-time and historical visibility into network health and performance.
Security & Compliance (Banking Environment)
- Ensure solutions align with financial industry regulatory expectations (security, auditability, resiliency).
- Embed security controls into automation workflows (Zero Trust, segmentation, identity-aware networking).
- Partner with cybersecurity teams to automate security policy enforcement and validation.
Collaboration & Architecture
- Partner with cloud, SRE, DevOps, and application teams to deliver scalable infrastructure platforms.
- Contribute to technical architecture and roadmap discussions for next-generation network platforms.
- Produce clear documentation and contribute to engineering standards and best practices.
Required Experience
- 5+ years in network engineering (enterprise or financial services preferred)
- Strong hands-on experience with:
- Python (network automation, APIs, data handling)
- Ansible and/or Terraform
- REST APIs, JSON/YAML
- Git-based workflows
- Solid understanding of networking fundamentals:
- TCP/IP, BGP, OSPF, VLANs, VPNs
- Firewalls, load balancers, segmentation
- SD-WAN or modern WAN architectures
- Experience with monitoring/telemetry platforms (Splunk, Elastic, Prometheus, Datadog, etc.)
Nice to Have
- Experience applying AI/ML to infrastructure or operations data
- Exposure to:
- Streaming telemetry (gRPC, OpenConfig, model-driven telemetry)
- Network data lakes or pipelines
- Cloud networking (AWS, Azure, GCP)
- Certifications such as:
- CCNP / CCIE
- AWS Advanced Networking
- DevNet
- Security-related certifications
- Experience in regulated industries (banking, fintech, healthcare, insurance)