Principal Network Automation Engineer
Confirmed on the employer's own hiring board on Oct 28, 2026. First seen by Alion on Oct 27, 2026. GSK scores B on the Alion truth index.
Business Introduction
GSK remains committed to achieving bold commercial ambitions for the future. By 2031, we aim to deliver £40 billion in annual sales, leveraging our existing strong performance momentum to significantly increase our positive impact on the health of billions of patients globally. Our Ahead Together strategy is centred on early intervention to prevent and alter the course of disease, thereby protecting people and supporting healthcare systems.
Our diverse portfolio consists of vaccines, specialty medicines, and general medicines.
Through continuous innovation and a dedicated focus on scientific and technical excellence, we strive to develop and launch new, groundbreaking treatments that address critical health challenges.
Job Purpose
We're looking for a Network Automation AI Engineer to design, build, and operate AI agents that automate network operations, ITSM, and lifecycle management across a large enterprise network estate. You'll combine traditional network automation (Cisco, Itential, ServiceNow) with modern agentic AI (LLM orchestration, MCP tool integration, RAG) to build production-grade, safety-gated automation.
Responsibilities
- Design and build AI agents (using frameworks like Google ADK, LangChain, or similar) that interact with network infrastructure via Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers or custom tool integrations
- Write and iterate on system prompts/instructions that ground LLM behavior in real tool schemas, enforce anti-hallucination discipline, and avoid unsafe automation
- Integrate agents with ITSM platforms (ServiceNow) for incident, change, and CMDB data, and with network orchestration platforms (Itential) for workflow execution
- Build human-in-the-loop approval workflows for any agent capability that can modify production network state (e.g., plan → approve/reject → apply patterns), with strict identity/authorization guardrails
- Develop and maintain backend services (Python, FastAPI) exposing agents via REST/A2A/JSON-RPC protocols
- Containerize and deploy agents (Docker, Cloud Run, CI/CD via GitHub Actions) with per-agent configuration, environment isolation, and secrets management
- Instrument agents with observability (OpenTelemetry, structured logging, Cloud Logging) for tool I/O, session traces, and audit trails
- Collaborate with network engineering teams to translate operational runbooks (EOL/EOS tracking, device lifecycle, LAN/WAN/wireless health checks, config change validation) into agent capabilities
- Own RBAC/token propagation and security review for agent-to-tool and agent-to-user authentication
- Test agents against live/staging MCP servers, validate tool schemas, and iterate on prompt engineering based on real session traces
- Document architecture decisions, known gotchas, and operational runbooks for the agent fleet
Required Qualifications
- Overall 10 Years and strong Python skills; experience building async services (FastAPI, asyncio)
- Hands-on experience with LLM application development: prompt engineering, tool/function calling, RAG, multi-turn session/state management
- Familiarity with agent frameworks (Google ADK, LangChain, LangGraph, Semantic Kernel, or similar) and agent-to-agent/tool protocols (MCP, A2A)
- Networking fundamentals: Cisco IOS/IOS-XE, LAN/WAN/wireless architecture, routing, switching, firewalls
- Experience with ITSM tooling (ServiceNow) and network orchestration platforms (Itential, NSO, or similar)
- Docker containerization and CI/CD pipeline experience (GitHub Actions or equivalent)
- Cloud platform experience (GCP preferred: Vertex AI, Cloud Run, BigQuery, Secret Manager)
- Strong understanding of security practices for automation that can modify production infrastructure (least privilege, approval gating, audit logging)
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with LiteLLM or multi-provider LLM routing/fallback strategies
- Familiarity with Itential Automation Platform / Operations Manager workflows
- Experience with vector search / RAG pipelines (Vertex AI Search, embeddings, citation grounding)
- Background in network automation scripting (Netmiko, NAPALM, Genie/pyATS, Ansible)
- Experience designing safety guardrails for write-capable AI agents (change management, approval workflows)
- Exposure to OpenTelemetry/observability tooling and FinOps/cost tracking for LLM usage
Skills
Agent Development Lifecycle (ADLC), AI Integration, Automation Technology, Cloud Based Services, Computer Programming, Configuration Management (CM), Engineering Technology, IP Address Management (IPAM), IT Networking, Load Balancers, Network Design, Operational Technology (OT), Orchestrate, Packet Switching, Routing and Switching, Security Engineering, Software-Defined Networking Wide Area Network (SD-WAN), System Monitors, Wireless System Design, Zero Trust ArchitectureWhy GSK?
Uniting science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together.
GSK is a global biopharma company with a purpose to unite science, technology and talent to get ahead of disease together. We aim to positively impact the health of 2.5 billion people by the end of the decade, as a successful, growing company where people can thrive. We get ahead of disease by preventing and treating it with innovation in specialty medicines and vaccines. We focus on four therapeutic areas: respiratory, immunology and inflammation; oncology; HIV; and infectious diseases - to impact health at scale.
People and patients around the world count on the medicines and vaccines we make, so we’re committed to creating an environment where our people can thrive and focus on what matters most. Our culture of being ambitious for patients, accountable for impact and doing the right thing is the foundation for how, together, we deliver for patients, shareholders and our people.
Inclusion at GSK:
As an employer committed to Inclusion, we encourage you to reach out if you need any adjustments during the recruitment process.
Please contact our Recruitment Team at [email protected] to discuss your needs.
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