Telco SRE Engineer

Position Overview

We are looking for SRE/DevOps to join our AST’s Telco Software Development team to design and develop innovative telco software solutions and components. This is a hands-on engineering role for engineers who are motivated by building genuinely novel software in a fast-moving, greenfield environment. You will be embedded in a small, high-ownership team where your code ships into real network infrastructure, and where the technical decisions you contribute to will directly shape AST’s long-term differentiation.

Candidates may come from a software engineering background (strong systems and backend, ideally with telecom exposure) or from other related engineering domains with solid software development skills.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and implement GitOps-driven infrastructure on Kubernetes using ArgoCD for continuous deployment and declarative infrastructure management
• Develop Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) solutions for telco infrastructure using Terraform and CloudFormation
• Build and optimize GitOps pipelines for automated, auditable infrastructure and application deployments
• Manage containerized workloads on Kubernetes clusters supporting LTE/5G core and RAN services
• Implement and optimize monitoring, logging, and alerting systems using Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, and similar tools
• Translate architectural specifications, interface control documents (ICDs), and functional & non-functional requirements into clean, well-tested, production-ready code
• Automate operational tasks to reduce manual toil and improve system reliability through declarative configuration management
• Document infrastructure architecture, runbooks, and standard operating procedures
• Collaborate with network engineers and software teams to ensure seamless infrastructure integration

Qualifications

Education:

Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Telecommunications Engineering, or a related field — or equivalent professional experience.

Experience:

A minimum of 3+ years of DevOps/SRE production experience – exposure to telecom or network related development projects is a plus.

• Strong proficiency with Kubernetes, GitOps (ArgoCD), and containerization on AWS, Azure, or GCP
• Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, CloudFormation) and declarative CI pipelines (Azure pipelines, GitLab CI, or similar)
• Networking fundamentals
• Scripting/automation (Python, Bash, Go) and operations: monitoring (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK), security, compliance
• Demonstrated problem-solving ability and ownership mindset
• English proficiency at B2 level or above; able to collaborate effectively with peers and architects in a globally distributed team

Preferred Qualifications:

• Advanced GitOps patterns: multi-tenancy, multi-cluster, progressive delivery (Argo Rollouts); familiarity with Flux or alternative frameworks
• Service mesh expertise (Istio, Linkerd) in containerized environments
• Deep telco domain knowledge: RAN (gNodeB, CU/DU), 5G Core (5GC, network slicing), LTE Core (EPC, MME), BSS/OSS platforms
• 5G SA/NSA architectures, NFV, and network function testing
• SDN, OpenFlow, and edge computing (MEC) fundamentals
• Previous experience at telecommunications carrier or major telco vendor
• Relevant certifications (Kubernetes, AWS, GCP, or telco-specific)

Soft Skills:

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills - able to break down complex, under-defined problems and deliver working software iteratively
• High ownership mentality - take personal responsibility for the quality and correctness of your own work, not just task completion
• Collaborative and communicative - actively participates in design discussions, code reviews, and cross-functional conversations
• Curious and self-directed - proactively learns domain context (telecom protocols, network architecture) beyond what is immediately required for the next ticket
• Comfortable with ambiguity and greenfield work - able to operate effectively when specifications are evolving and there is no legacy codebase to reference
• Attention to detail in code quality, test coverage, and documentation

Technology Stack:

Deployment & Container Orchestration:

- Kubernetes (EKS, on-premises)

- Helm, Kustomize (package management and templating)

- ArgoCD, Flux (GitOps continuous deployment)

Infrastructure & IaC:

- Terraform, CloudFormation (infrastructure-as-code)

- AWS: EC2, ECS, EKS, VPC, networking

- Linux

CI/CD & Version Control:

- Azure pipelines, GitLab CI (declarative pipelines)

- Git (version control, branching strategies)

Observability & Monitoring:

- Prometheus, Grafana (metrics collection and visualization)

- ELK Stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) for logging

- Datadog, New Relic (APM and distributed tracing)

Telco Infrastructure:

- 3GPP standards and specifications

- RAN: gNodeB, eNodeB, CU/DU split architectures

- 5G Core: 5GC, network slicing, service-based architecture (SBA)

- LTE Core: EPC, MME, SGW, PGW

- OSS/BSS platforms and network management systems

Programming & Scripting:

- Python, Bash, Go

- REST API design and integration

Physical Requirements

• Ability to work in a standard office or remote home-office environment and use a computer for extended periods
• Ability to participate in occasional after-hours incident response actions