About this role
JOB DESCRIPTION · INFRASTRUCTURE AUTOMATION · TECHNICAL LEADERSHIP Technical Lead Automation Terraform · Ansible · ServiceNow Dev Infrastructure-as-Code CI/CD Pipelines Python / Bash GitOps Ansible AAP Terraform Cloud ServiceNow ITSM/ITOM Kubernetes Infrastructure / DevOps / Automation Department Head of Infrastructure / CTO Reports To Full-Time Employment 7–12 Years Experience 3–8 Automation Engineers Team Lead 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 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/