Freelance Python Automation Engineer Jobs in Washington, DC

Position Overview

We are seeking an OSS Test & Automation Engineer to join the team responsible for developing our core network platform - OSS. In this role, you will act as the primary owner of OSS workflow automation development and test engineering. Your primary focus will be to build, test, document and maintain automation processes executed within the OSS platform - covering network operations, service assurance, reporting, and partner integration workflows. At the same time, you will tightly collaborate with internal Service Assurance and Service Delivery teams to gather requirements, transfer knowledge about the developed automation processes, and receive feedback about the required improvements and changes. You are not a pure QA resource since you are an automation developer who also ensures what is built is verifiably correct and operates as expected by the end users. 

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and maintain automation workflows and orchestration scripts executed within our own OSS platform, covering network operations, fault management, service assurance, reporting, and inventory
• Own and grow the automation backlog - identify manual, error-prone, or repetitive operational processes as candidates for automation, estimate effort, and drive items through to production delivery
• Design, implement, and maintain automated test suites that validate automation workflows under both nominal and fault/edge-case conditions
• Execute test plans, document results, track defects, and drive resolution in collaboration with all involved internal teams
• Produce clear test documentation of test plans, test cases, test reports, and coverage summaries
• Cooperate with internal Service Assurance and Service Delivery teams by fostering knowledge transfer, gathering requirements, and jointly identifying next steps in developing new automated workflows and processes
• Proactively identify automation failures, performance degradations, or reliability issues and drive root-cause analysis and remediation
• Continuously improve automation reliability, coverage, and maintainability based on operational feedback and incident learnings
• Act as first line contact and support line for internal Service Assurance and Service Delivery concerning OSS automated processes and workflows already introduced into production
• Maintain clear, accurate documentation for all automation workflows introduced 

Qualifications 

Education:

Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, telecommunications or a related field - or equivalent professional experience.

Experience & Qualifications:

• A minimum of 3+ years of professional experience in automation engineering, test engineering, or a combined software/QA role, preferably in telecom, network operations, or OSS/BSS systems.
• Proven experience designing and building automation workflows, orchestration scripts, or operational automation pipelines - not just test scripts
• Solid proficiency in Python or any other scripting language and familiarity with modern test frameworks (e.g. pytest, Robot)
• Familiarity with at least one workflow orchestration or BPM tool (e.g. Camunda, Apache Airflow, Ansible, or similar)
• Ability to query and manipulate data in SQL and/or NoSQL databases
• Strong command of test strategy design, test case development, test automation frameworks, and defect lifecycle management
• Familiarity with telecom OSS concepts like FCAPS, TMF eTOM framework or similar operational support system concepts
• Practical exposure to network operations workflows and/or service assurance processes
• Working knowledge of NETCONF/YANG, SNMP, or TMF Open APIs as integration surfaces for automation workflows
• Familiarity with OSS platforms, NMS/EMS systems, or network simulation tools used for test environment setup
• Hands-on experience integrating automation with REST APIs and event-driven messaging systems (e.g. Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS)
• Experience embedding quality gates and automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or equivalent)
• Practical experience with monitoring and logging tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, or equivalent) for making automated workflows observable in production
• Comfortable developing, deploying, and debugging automation in Linux

Soft Skills:

• Strong problem-solving mindset with a bias toward automation and operational efficiency
• Collaborative and communicative - comfortable working in a globally distributed team
• Ownership mentality - take responsibility for end-to-end reliability of systems under your care
• Adaptable and self-directed, with the ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced environment
• Meticulous attention to detail in documentation, change management, and operational procedures 

Technology Stack:

• Python (automation, scripting, test frameworks)
• Camunda, Apache Airflow, Ansible, or equivalent BPM/orchestration tooling
• Pytest, Robot Framework, or equivalent
• Postman, requests library, or similar
• GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, ArgoCD
• Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, structured logging
• REST, gRPC, Kafka, RabbitMQ, TMF Open APIs, NETCONF/YANG
• Databases:
  • PostgreSQL / MySQL (SQL)
  • MongoDB, Cassandra, or equivalent (NoSQL)
  • InfluxDB or similar (Time-series DBs)
• Docker, Kubernetes (working knowledge for deploying automation workloads)
• Git (GitHub / GitLab)
• Confluence, test case management tools (e.g. TestRail, Xray, or equivalent)

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

This job description may not be inclusive to the duties and responsibilities listed. Additional tasks may be assigned to the employee from time to time or the scope of the job may change as needed by business demands.