Network Automation & AI Engineer

Network Automation & AI Engineer Location: Remote Duration: 12+ Months We are seeking an experienced Network Automation & AI Engineer for a contract engagement supporting a large-scale global enterprise network. This hands-on role will use network automation, AI, analytics, and cloud technologies to improve how the network is operated, monitored, troubleshot, and managed. Environment: approximately 7,650 retail locations across the U.S., Mexico, and Brazil, plus corporate facilities and distribution centers. Core technologies include Cisco SD-WAN, Cisco routing and switching, Cisco Meraki wireless, and Google Cloud Platform (Google Cloud Platform). Objective: move Network Engineering and Operations from manual, reactive processes toward automated, proactive, exception-based network management. This is not a traditional NOC role or a pure software-development position; the ideal candidate combines strong enterprise networking knowledge with practical automation, cloud, and AI development skills. Key Responsibilities • Identify and automate repetitive, high-volume Network Engineering and Operations activities. • Build production-ready automation for configuration, validation, monitoring, troubleshooting, remediation, and reporting. • Integrate Cisco, Meraki, Google Cloud Platform, monitoring-platform, and other enterprise APIs into automation workflows. • Develop proactive exception-management capabilities that identify poorly performing locations, circuits, devices, wireless environments, and cloud connections. • Analyze and correlate telemetry, alarms, logs, configurations, incidents, and performance data to surface meaningful issues and reduce alarm noise. • Apply generative AI/LLMs to troubleshooting, configuration and incident analysis, documentation, and operational decision support. • Use Claude Code or comparable AI-assisted development tools to accelerate scripting, API integration, testing, documentation, and automation development. • Develop network-health reporting, anomaly detection, configuration/compliance validation, and safe automated remediation for appropriate low-risk conditions. • Document solutions and transfer code, frameworks, practices, and knowledge to the internal Network Engineering team. Required Skills • Enterprise networking: routing, switching, WAN/LAN/WLAN, BGP, OSPF, TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VPNs • Cisco routing/switching, Cisco SD-WAN, and Cisco Meraki • Python, REST APIs, JSON/YAML, Git, and network automation frameworks • Ansible or similar automation technologies • Network telemetry, monitoring platforms, SNMP, syslog, APIs, and operational data • Cloud networking and hybrid enterprise/cloud architectures • Production automation at enterprise scale with appropriate validation and controls Strongly Preferred Skills • Google Cloud Platform networking and APIs, including VPCs, routing, firewall policies, VPN/Interconnect, Cloud Monitoring, and Cloud Logging • Claude Code or similar AI-assisted development tools • Generative AI, LLMs, AI agents, anomaly detection, or ML applied to infrastructure/operations • Large geographically distributed enterprise networks • Dashboards, health scores, proactive monitoring, or exception-management solutions