Principal Automation Engineer

Principal Automation Engineer (12 Month Contract)

Location: Toronto - 100 Adelaide St W
Time Type: Full time
Salary Range: $125/hour - $145/hour CAD

Role Summary

As the Principal Automation Engineer, you will serve as the strategic leader for infrastructure automation across TMX Group, driving the transition toward a "Platform Engineering" model focused on our self-hosted physical datacenters. You will define the enterprise roadmap for Infrastructure as Code (IaC), leveraging Ansible Automation Platform and Terraform to build standardized, self-service pipelines across our hybrid-cloud environment (on-premise, Open Shift, and AWS).

You will also spearhead the integration of Generative AI tools (e.g., Copilot/Claude/Gemini) into the automation ecosystem, providing architectural governance and establishing automated guardrails for security and compliance.

Key Accountabilities

• Platform Strategy and Core Infrastructure:
  Define and drive the enterprise strategy for Platform Engineering and IaC using Ansible Automation Platform and Terraform for both bare-metal and virtualized infrastructure (Red Hat, Open Shift, VMware). Lead the architecture and implementation of critical datacenter technologies (PXE, DHCP, DNS, LDAP, LVM/XFS, Net App, PURE, Portworx).

• Governance and Technical Expertise:
  Establish architectural governance and automated compliance guardrails for security, ensuring high availability within a regulated financial environment.

• Generative AI Integration and Innovation:
  Spearhead the integration and adoption of Generative AI tools (e.g., Copilot/Claude) to augment engineering velocity, code development, and autonomous operations.

• Technical Leadership and Team Development:
  Act as the subject matter expert (SME) for low-level performance tuning, observability (Splunk/Grafana), and OS lifecycle management (Red Hat Satellite). Provide direct technical oversight and mentorship to Automation and Systems Engineers.

Skills and Experience

• Experience:
  
  10+ years of progressive experience in Systems Engineering, Infrastructure Automation, or Platform Engineering in an enterprise context.

• Education:
  
  Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or relevant job experience.

• Core Datacenter/Linux Expertise:
  Deep expertise in self-hosted physical datacenters. Mastery of Red Hat Linux (8, 9, 10) and core fundamentals: PXE, DHCP, DNS, LDAP, LVM/XFS storage management, host-based firewall/SSH configuration, and performance tuning.

• Automation & IaC Strategy:
  Proven expertise in large-scale Infrastructure as Code (IaC) strategies using Ansible Automation Platform and Terraform.

• Platform Technologies:
  Expert knowledge of virtualization and container platforms, including Open Shift Container Platform/Virtualization and VMware. Experience with Red Hat Satellite.

• Storage Solutions:
  Expert-level familiarity with on-premise storage (Net App, PURE Storage) and container-native storage (Portworx).

• Observability:
  Experience architecting and utilizing monitoring and logging platforms such as Splunk Observability/Cloud and Grafana.

• Generative AI & Programming:
  Advanced proficiency in Python. Hands-on experience leveraging Generative AI tools to automate complex workflows.

• Communication:
  Strong enterprise-level verbal and written communication and leadership skills.