Principal, Critical Network Platforms

Optus is an Australian telecommunications company, delivering more than 11 million services to our customers every day across mobile, broadband, and digital solutions.

As the Principal, Critical Network Platforms, you be tasked with designing, building, and providing high-quality hybrid infrastructure platforms for network automation tooling, operational systems, and engineering workloads.

What You’ll Do

• Define, manage, and maintain hybrid infrastructure architecture patterns, reference builds, standards, and guardrails across on-premises data centres, private cloud (OpenShift, Proxmox), and public cloud (AWS, GCP) environments.
• Lead infrastructure build reviews and provide architectural assurance across initiatives, ensuring scalability, security, compliance, and production readiness.
• Build and sustain on-premises compute platforms, encompassing bare-metal server provisioning, hypervisor management, hardware lifecycle planning, firmware and BIOS oversight, and capacity modelling.
• Build, deploy, and manage OpenShift container platform environments, ensuring seamless cluster lifecycle management and ongoing day-2 operations.
• Develop and sustain infrastructure-as-code (IaC) frameworks using Terraform and Ansible, establishing dependable provisioning and configuration management.
• Build, coordinate, and refine CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure delivery using GitLab CI/CD and GitOps patterns.
• Develop and implement cloud and hybrid networking solutions, ensuring secure and high-performing integration between on-premises data centres and public cloud environments.
• Define and enforce platform security controls, including identity and access management (IAM), secrets management, network segmentation, and compliance-as-code tooling.
• Prototype and evaluate emerging infrastructure technologies, translating outcomes into actionable architectural recommendations and engineering standards.
• Mentor senior engineers and establish infrastructure engineering playbooks, build guides, and communities of practice.

What You Bring

• Tertiary qualifications in a relevant field or equivalent practical experience, with 8+ years' experience building and architecting production hybrid infrastructure in large, complex environments.
• Significant, hands-on experience with on-premises compute infrastructure, including bare-metal server provisioning and data centre capacity planning.
• Extensive proficiency in hypervisor platforms, accompanied by broad experience handling Proxmox VE environments at scale.
• Established expertise in rolling out and maintaining the Red Hat OpenShift container platform, involving cluster deployment and multi-tenancy.
• Solid experience in infrastructure-as-code platforms, such as Terraform and Ansible, supported by a history of handling production-grade hybrid infrastructure configurations.
• Extensive, practical experience with public cloud platforms (AWS and/or GCP), including strong abilities in connecting on-premises systems with cloud environments.
• Verified ability in developing and maintaining CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure delivery.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure security principles and compliance automation.
• Proven ability to autonomously influence technical direction and deliver outcomes within modern delivery models.
• Strong communication, documentation, and mentoring skills.

What’s in it for you? 

• Competitive remuneration and colleague discounts. Make life easier (and more affordable) with $80 monthly credit and 25% off Optus products and outstanding shopping discounts with our retail partners 

• Flexible working arrangements with opportunities to work three days in the office, two days remote or home 

• Vibrant and collaborative office campus that includes cafes, convenience store, chill-out zones, GP, post office, gym, and on-site childcare centre 

• Competitive leave policies, including additional 'Connected’ days to focus on culture, family, health, community, or whatever’s important to you 

• We support growing families with inclusive, carer-neutral paid Parental Leave of up to 16 weeks 

• Direct your development and build future-ready skills with Optus U’s industry-focused micro-credentials, developed with La Trobe and Macquarie Universities 

• Build meaningful connections through colleague-led networks and diversity initiatives including Culture Connect, Elevate Women, Disability Network, and Express Yourself (LGBTQIA+). 

• Put your wellbeing first with free access to counselling and support services, 24/7 — in-person, by phone, SMS, or video 

• Free Optus bus from Macquarie University Metro Station (every 6-8 minutes); morning and afternoon 

At Optus, we are strengthened by others and that means valuing diversity and saying ‘yes’ to embracing individual differences. We are committed to ensuring that our application process provides an equal employment opportunity to all job seekers, including individuals from diverse gender, cultural and linguistic backgrounds, individuals with a disability, individuals identifying as being part of the LGBTQIA+ community, individuals who may have served in the armed forces or who identify as Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander. We also want to do our best to make our recruitment process inclusive. 

If you require any adjustments or accessibility support to participate fairly and equitably in the recruitment process, please email AccessibleRecruitment@optus.com.au or call 1800 309 170. 

For more information on Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Optus, please visit https://www.optus.com.au/about/inclusion-diversity 

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