Ansible Automation Platform Engineer

Ansible Automation Platform Engineer

The Platform Engineer is responsible for the administration, maintenance, optimization, and support of the Ansible Automation Platform (AAP). This role ensures the reliability, scalability, security, and performance of the enterprise automation platform by managing containerized application deployments, platform lifecycle operations, cluster-integrated services, persistent storage, networking, and identity integrations. The Platform Engineer enables Southern Company teams to automate infrastructure and application processes efficiently by providing a stable, highly available automation platform while driving continuous improvement, governance, and adoption of automation capabilities across the IT environment.

• BS/BA in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent work experience

• Demonstrated knowledge of enterprise automation platforms, infrastructure automation, and configuration management concepts

• Experience administering or supporting Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) and related automation technologies

• Working knowledge of container orchestration, application deployment life cycles, and platform services

• Understanding of Linux operating systems, networking, storage, and identity management concepts

• Knowledge of infrastructure-as-code, Git-based workflows, and automation best practices

• Basic knowledge of security controls, privileged access management, secrets management, and compliance requirements

• Demonstrate strong communication and influence skills to encourage adoption of automation standards, reusable solutions, and platform best practices

• General knowledge of Southern Company's core business

• Ability to effectively organize tasks, manage multiple priorities/details, meet schedules, and deliver on customer commitments

• Ability to negotiate with and influence others, both internally and with vendors

• Ability to build relationships and work in a team atmosphere as well as work independently

• Ability to provide and accept feedback

• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills

• Experience troubleshooting platform issues involving automation workflows, integrations, networking, authentication, and system performance

• Understanding of platform monitoring, logging, capacity management, backup, recovery, and high-availability concepts

• Demonstrate Southern Style:
  Unquestionable Trust, Superior Performance, and Total Commitment

• Professional oral and written communication skills

• Understanding of how their activities impact function budget

• Administer, configure, and maintain the Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) to provide a secure, scalable, and highly available enterprise automation service.

• Manage platform components including automation controllers, execution environments, automation hub content, credential management, and integrations with enterprise systems.

• Monitor platform health, performance, availability, and capacity to ensure reliable operation of automation services.

• Troubleshoot and resolve platform, automation workflow, integration, authentication, networking, and application deployment issues.

• Perform platform lifecycle management activities including upgrades, patching, configuration changes, and validation testing.

• Manage platform resources, application deployments, storage, networking, and service configurations to support automation workloads.

• Implement and maintain high availability, backup, recovery, and disaster recovery capabilities for the automation platform.

• Collaborate with infrastructure, security, application, and engineering teams to onboard automation use cases and integrate enterprise technologies with the platform.

• Develop, maintain, and support reusable automation content, templates, workflows, execution environments, and platform standards.

• Implement and maintain role-based access controls (RBAC), credential management, secrets integration, and security controls to protect platform resources.

• Support source code management, CI/CD pipelines, and Git-based workflows used to develop, test, and deploy automation solutions.

• Respond to and resolve incidents within defined SLAs, including participation in on-call and after-hours support rotations as needed.

• Develop and maintain platform documentation, architecture diagrams, operational procedures, standards, and support guides.

• Perform capacity planning and provide recommendations for platform growth, performance optimization, and resource utilization.

• Provide technical guidance, governance, and best practices to encourage adoption of enterprise automation standards and reusable solutions.

• Evaluate and implement new platform capabilities, integrations, and automation technologies to improve operational efficiency and customer experience.

This position falls under the company’s Insider Threat Program and will have access to, and control over sensitive data, systems or assets. Enhanced personnel screening, which includes a background review, drug…