Associate Director, Automation Engineering

Every day, millions of Australians connect, work, stream, and stay in touch on the Optus network. When it works seamlessly, it's easy to take for granted. But behind it is a team making thousands of decisions every day - decisions that keep people, businesses and communities connected.

Right now, Optus is passionate about getting the fundamentals right - simplifying how we work, lifting standards, and building a more reliable, resilient experience for our customers. It's not about surface-level change. It's about how we make decisions, how we work together, and how we deliver.

The AD, Automation Engineering leads the strategy, design and delivery of cross-domain automation capabilities that enable Network Operations to transition from manual processes to intelligent and increasingly autonomous operations. The role is responsible for establishing scalable, resilient and auditable automation frameworks and services that improve operational efficiency, accelerate service restoration and enhance customer outcomes through close collaboration across technology and operational teams.

What You’ll Do

• Own and drive the cross-domain automation strategy, roadmap and maturity journey to support the transition to closed-loop and autonomous operations.
• Lead the design, engineering and industrialisation of scalable automation frameworks, services, workflows and reusable engineering standards.
• Enable integration across OSS, ITSM, network and operational platforms to support intelligent, governed and automated execution.
• Establish automation governance, testing, security, auditability and operational controls to ensure safe and resilient production deployment.
• Drive adoption and continuous optimisation of automation capabilities to reduce manual effort, improve service outcomes and deliver business value.
• Lead cross-functional stakeholder engagement and strategic technology partnerships to align automation priorities and investments.
• Build and develop a high-performing automation engineering team while fostering a culture of engineering excellence, accountability and continuous improvement.

What You’ll Bring

• Extensive leadership experience across telecommunications, Network Operations, automation engineering, OSS or large-scale technology environments.
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise-scale automation, orchestration or operational transformation capabilities across complex, distributed environments.
• Strong knowledge of automation engineering, APIs, workflow technologies, event-driven architectures and modern software engineering practices.
• Strong understanding of operational risk, resilience, observability, security and lifecycle governance for production automation.
• Proven ability to define capability strategy, engineering standards and roadmaps and translate them into measurable operational outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-domain teams and influence senior stakeholders across Operations, Engineering, Architecture and Technology.
• Strong commercial, financial and vendor management capability, including investment prioritisation and value realisation.
• Excellent strategic thinking, communication and executive stakeholder engagement skills.
• This role requires strong technical leadership and the ability to lead through influence as a senior individual contributor, with the opportunity to develop into a people leadership role over time.
• Relevant tertiary qualifications in Engineering, Telecommunications, Computer Science, Technology or equivalent significant industry experience.

The good stuff …

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

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

• 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 own 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 employee-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.

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, please email [email protected] or call 1800 309 170. We’re here to help. When you contact us, please advise your preferred method of contact and we will be in touch within 48 hours. For more information on Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Optus, please visit https://www.optus.com.au/about/inclusion-diversity.