Network Automation & OSS Designer at Bounteous, UK, 3 Months+, £Contract Rate

Job Title: Network Automation & OSS Designer

Experience Level: 08-15 Years

Duration: 3 months + rolling

Any UK location is ok

Job Summary

We are looking for an experienced Technical Solution Designer with 8 to 15 years of experience who combines deep network domain knowledge with strong hands-on expertise in automation frameworks, APIs, event-driven architectures, and cloud-native tooling. The ideal candidate will translate complex network and business requirements into scalable, standards-aligned architectural blueprints and reference designs that span multiple network domains.

Key Responsibilities/Job Description

• Design end-to-end network automation solution architectures spanning orchestration, inventory, compliance, and observability layers.
• Develop reference architectures and detailed solution blueprints for multi-domain network automation (IP/MPLS, optical, mobile RAN/Core, SD-WAN, cloud).
• Define integration patterns for northbound and southbound APIs, resource-facing interfaces, and event-driven message exchanges.
• Ensure solutions align with industry standards such as TM Forum Open APIs (TMF), IETF, ONF, ETSI NFV, and 3GPP.
• Produce solution design artifacts including High-Level Designs (HLD), Low-Level Designs (LLD), interface control documents, and data models.
• Architect automation workflows for network service orchestration, lifecycle management, and activation.
• Design resource and service inventory models aligned with TMF SID/eTOM frameworks.
• Define compliance and configuration governance strategies leveraging Config-as-Code and GitOps principles.
• Drive the adoption of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tooling (Terraform, Ansible, Helm) for network resource provisioning.
• Design Kafka-based event streaming and messaging architectures for real-time network telemetry and automation triggers.
• Define observability strategies covering metrics, logs, traces, and network telemetry pipelines.
• Architect AIOps capabilities including closed-loop automation, anomaly detection, and predictive analytics for network operations.
• Integrate OSS observability with cloud-native monitoring stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Elasticsearch).
• Lead design of intent-based networking and policy-driven automation frameworks.
• Collaborate with product managers, network engineers, platform teams, and DevOps practitioners to drive solution design to implementation.
• Present architectural proposals to senior technical and business stakeholders, driving consensus and sign-off.
• Guide and mentor development teams on best practices for network automation and cloud-native OSS development.
• Evaluate and recommend open-source tools, frameworks, and vendor solutions relevant to network automation.
• Contribute to OSS community, standards bodies, and internal knowledge repositories.

Required Skills & Experience:

• 8–15 years of experience in network automation, OSS solution design, or network architecture roles.
• Proven expertise in designing solutions for network orchestration and activation platforms.
• Strong knowledge of network resource APIs and interfaces: NETCONF/YANG, RESTCONF, gNMI/gRPC, OpenConfig, SNMP.
• Experience with TMF Open APIs (TMF641, TMF639, TMF638, TMF640, TMF642, TMF652) for service and resource management.
• Hands-on experience with Config-as-Code and Infrastructure-as-Code tools: Ansible, Terraform, Helm, GitOps workflows.
• Strong understanding of Apache Kafka: topic design, partitioning, consumer groups, schema registry, and Kafka Streams.
• Experience designing event-driven microservices and publish-subscribe integration patterns for telemetry and automation.
• Solid understanding of SDN principles, controllers (ONOS, ODL, Nokia NSP, Cisco NSO), and programmable networking.
• Good knowledge of NFV frameworks (ETSI NFV MANO, VNF/CNF lifecycle management).
• Understanding of AIOps platforms and closed-loop automation design for network operations.
• Experience with observability tooling: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, Loki, ELK Stack.
• Knowledge of ML/AI model integration for anomaly detection, root-cause analysis, and predictive network management.
• Strong grasp of TM Forum frameworks: eTOM, TAM, SID, and Open Digital Architecture (ODA).
• Familiarity with IETF network automation standards (RFC 8040, RFC 6241, YANG data models).
• Understanding of ONF TAPI, MEF LSO standards, and 3GPP OSS interfaces for mobile networks.
• Prior experience working in a telco, CSP, or large enterprise network engineering environment.
• Must have CCNA or equivalent network certification

Nice to have skills:

• Hands-on development experience with Python, Go, or Java for network automation tooling.
• Understanding of zero-touch provisioning (ZTP), self-healing networks, and autonomous network operations.
• Experience with digital twin concepts for network simulation and what-if analysis.
• Exposure to intent-based networking (IBN) and policy frameworks (OPA, TOSCA).