Principal, Critical Network Platforms

Singtel; Sydney; Hybrid; AUD 220,000 - 320,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive remuneration

Employee discounts

$80 monthly credit

25% off Optus products

Flexible work - 3 days in office, 2 at

On-site childcare

Job summary

Optus in Australia is seeking a Principal, Critical Network Platforms to lead the design, architecture and hands‑on delivery of scalable, secure, hybrid infrastructure platforms. These platforms underpin network automation tooling and engineering workloads across on‑premises data centres, private cloud and public cloud environments.

You’ll set technical direction for the IP Network Engineering & Tooling team and mentor senior engineers to uplift team capability, while delivering IaC, CI/CD and

Qualifications

• Tertiary qualifications or equivalent practical experience.
• 8+ years’ experience building and architecting production hybrid infrastructure in large, complex environments.
• Hands‑on experience with on‑premises compute infrastructure, bare‑metal provisioning and hardware lifecycle management.

Responsibilities

• Define, govern and maintain hybrid infrastructure architecture patterns across on‑premises data centres, private cloud and public cloud environments.
• Lead infrastructure design reviews and provide architectural assurance for availability, resilience and compliance.
• Architect and manage OpenShift cluster lifecycle, RBAC, storage integration and day‑2 operations.
• Design, deploy and operate OpenShift environments and CI/CD pipelines; manage cluster lifecycle and operator frameworks.
• Architect and deliver infrastructure‑as‑code using Terraform and Ansible for consistent provisioning and drift control.
• Collaborate with observability and automation teams to deliver integrated platform capabilities.

Skills

Hybrid infrastructure

OpenShift

Proxmox VE

Terraform

Ansible

AWS/GCP

GitLab CI/CD

RBAC

CI/CD pipelines

Cloud networking

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Tools

Ceph

ZFS

OpenShift

Job description

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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’ll be the senior technical leader accountable for the design, architecture and hands‑on delivery of scalable, secure and resilient hybrid infrastructure platforms. These platforms underpin network automation tooling, operational systems and engineering workloads across on‑premises data centres, private cloud (OpenShift, Proxmox) and public cloud (AWS and GCP). You’ll set technical direction, standards and design patterns for the IP Network Engineering (IPNE) & Tooling team, and mentor senior engineers to uplift team capability.

What You’ll Do

• Define, govern and maintain hybrid infrastructure architecture patterns, reference designs, standards and guardrails across on‑premises data centres, private cloud (OpenShift, Proxmox) and public cloud (AWS, GCP) environments, ensuring scalability, security, compliance and production readiness.
• Lead infrastructure design reviews and provide architectural assurance across initiatives, addressing non‑functional requirements (availability, resilience, blast-radius control, performance and compliance) from day one.
• Architect and manage on‑premises compute platforms, including bare‑metal server provisioning, hypervisor management (Proxmox), hardware lifecycle planning, firmware and BIOS governance, and capacity modelling for data centre workloads.
• Design, deploy and operate OpenShift container platform environments, including cluster lifecycle management, operator frameworks, multi‑tenancy, RBAC, storage integration and day‑2 operations for production engineering workloads.
• Architect and deliver infrastructure‑as‑code (IaC) frameworks using Terraform and Ansible, establishing consistent provisioning, configuration management and drift control across on‑premises and cloud environments.
• Build, govern and evolve CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure delivery using GitLab CI/CD and GitOps patterns, enabling autonomous, repeatable and auditable deployment of platform changes.
• Architect and deliver cloud and hybrid networking constructs, including VPCs, transit gateways, VPNs, private connectivity, DNS and firewall policy, ensuring secure and performant 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, supply‑chain security and compliance‑as‑code tooling.
• Prototype and evaluate emerging infrastructure technologies, including hyperconverged infrastructure, container‑native storage and private cloud orchestration platforms, translating outcomes into actionable architectural recommendations and engineering standards.
• Establish and maintain infrastructure engineering playbooks, design guides and communities of practice, mentoring senior engineers through peer reviews, design critiques and capability uplift programmes.
• Collaborate with observability, automation and software engineering teams to deliver integrated platform capabilities, including infrastructure telemetry, capacity signalling and cost governance.

What You Bring

• Tertiary qualifications in a relevant discipline, or equivalent practical experience, with 8+ years’ experience building and architecting production hybrid infrastructure in large, complex environments.
• Deep, hands‑on experience with on‑premises compute infrastructure, including bare‑metal server provisioning, hardware lifecycle management, firmware and BIOS governance, storage arrays and data centre capacity planning.
• Strong expertise in hypervisor platforms, with hands‑on experience managing Proxmox VE environments at scale, including cluster management, VM lifecycle, storage backends (Ceph, ZFS) and high‑availability configuration.
• Proven experience deploying and operating Red Hat OpenShift container platform, including cluster provisioning (IPI/UPI), operator lifecycle management, multi‑tenancy, RBAC, persistent storage integration and day‑2 platform operations.
• Expert proficiency in infrastructure‑as‑code tooling, including Terraform and Ansible, with demonstrated experience managing production‑grade hybrid infrastructure estates at scale.
• Deep, hands‑on experience across public cloud platforms (AWS and/or GCP), including compute, networking, storage, IAM and managed services, with strong integration experience between on‑premises and cloud environments.
• Proven experience building and governing CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure delivery using GitLab CI/CD, GitOps workflows and policy‑as‑code tooling.
• Deep knowledge of cloud and hybrid networking constructs, including routing, DNS, VPN/Direct Connect, network segmentation and firewall policy management.
• Strong understanding of infrastructure security principles, including IAM, zero‑trust networking, secrets management (e.g. Vault), supply‑chain security and compliance automation.
• Proven ability to autonomously influence technical direction and deliver outcomes, operating effectively within modern delivery models.
• Strong communication, documentation and mentoring skills, with a disciplined yet flexible approach to problem‑solving and delivery.
• Desirable: hands‑on experience with observability and platform telemetry tooling, including Grafana, Victoria Metrics, Prometheus and Elasticsearch, with an emphasis on infrastructure health and capacity signalling.
• Desirable: exposure to network engineering contexts, including IP networking fundamentals and integration between cloud platforms and telecoms infrastructure.
• Desirable: experience with cost governance frameworks for hybrid infrastructure, including FinOps practices and tooling for visibility and optimisation across on‑premises and cloud spend.
• Desirable: familiarity with hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platforms and container‑native storage solutions such as Ceph, Rook or OpenEBS in production environments.

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

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 [e-mail] or call 1800 309 170.

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