Wireless Network Automations Engineer

Overview

Penn State IT is seeking a highly motivated Wireless Automation Engineer to join the ENCS Wireless team. This position will play a critical role in designing, automating, and operating Penn State’s next‑generation wireless platform built on Juniper Mist. Penn State is currently undergoing a multi‑year transformation from Aruba wireless infrastructure to a Juniper Mist cloud‑managed wireless platform across campuses and facilities statewide.

This role will help accelerate and operationalize that transition through automation, telemetry, observability, and modern network engineering practices.

• Design, develop, and maintain automation workflows for wireless provisioning, configuration management, and large‑scale deployments.
• Develop reusable automation frameworks and configuration templates for Juniper Mist wireless environments.
• Implement configuration‑as‑code and version‑controlled deployment methodologies.
• Automate operational tasks including validation, auditing, diagnostics, and recovery workflows.

• Develop telemetry pipelines and operational dashboards leveraging Mist APIs, RADIUS data, and wireless performance metrics.
• Integrate SLE metrics, authentication telemetry, and network health data into enterprise monitoring and alerting platforms.
• Build analytics and reporting solutions to improve visibility into user experience, onboarding success, and wireless reliability.
• Identify operational trends and develop proactive remediation strategies using telemetry and automation.

• Improve wireless service resilience, operational consistency, and change reliability through automation and standardization.
• Support enterprise wireless architecture, deployment standards, and lifecycle strategies.
• Participate in troubleshooting complex wireless and authentication issues across large‑scale enterprise environments.
• Contribute to operational readiness, incident response, and service improvement initiatives.
• Participate in the wireless engineering team’s on‑call rotation and support operational escalations as required.

• Collaborate with networking, security, endpoint management, and campus IT teams to improve wireless service delivery.
• Develop technical documentation, operational runbooks, and internal self‑service tools.
• Mentor team members on automation practices and operational modernization.
• Participate in cross‑functional initiatives supporting Penn State IT modernization efforts.

• Experience supporting enterprise wireless networking environments.
• Strong understanding of wireless networking fundamentals, RF concepts, and authentication technologies including EAP‑TLS and RADIUS.
• Experience developing automation using Python and REST APIs.
• Experience working with JSON, scripting, and infrastructure automation concepts.
• Familiarity with monitoring, telemetry, or observability platforms.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem‑solving skills.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills in a large, distributed environment.

Bachelor’s Degree and 6+ years of relevant experience; or an equivalent combination of education and experience accepted. No required certifications.

• Experience with Juniper Mist wireless platforms and Marvis.
• Experience with infrastructure automation tools such as Ansible or Terraform.
• Familiarity with CI/CD workflows, Git, and Dev Ops practices.
• Experience integrating APIs and telemetry into operational workflows.
• Experience with Power BI, Splunk, Grafana, or similar analytics and visualization platforms.
• Familiarity with cloud‑managed networking platforms.
• Familiarity with event‑driven automation, webhooks, and real‑time data processing.
• Industry certifications such as CWNA, CWNP, JNCIS, or equivalent.

• Automation‑first engineering mindset.
• Strong attention to operational consistency and reliability.
• Passion for continuous improvement and operational modernization.
• Ability to balance engineering, operational support, and strategic…