Ansible Automation Platform Engineer

Southern Company; Birmingham (AL); On-site; USD 115,000 - 140,000; Full time

Job summary

Southern Company is seeking a Platform Engineer to administer the Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) and drive enterprise automation across IT. You will manage controllers, environments, credentials, and integrations while ensuring security, performance, and high availability.

You will monitor, troubleshoot, and upgrade platform components, collaborate with multiple teams, and champion reusable automation content and RBAC practices to enable scalable automation adoption across the organization.

Qualifications

• BS/BA in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent work experience.
• Experience with enterprise automation platforms and configuration management.
• Experience administering Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) and related automation technologies.
• Knowledge of container orchestration, deployment lifecycles, and platform services.
• Understand Linux, networking, storage, and identity management.
• Infrastructure-as-code and Git-based workflows.
• Security controls, privileged access management, secrets, and compliance.
• Strong communication and influence to promote automation standards.
• General knowledge of Southern Company's core business.
• Ability to organize tasks, manage priorities, and meet commitments.
• Ability to negotiate with internal teams and vendors.
• Team-oriented and capable of working independently.
• Feedback-oriented and proactive.
• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills.
• Experience troubleshooting platform issues with automation workflows, integrations, networking, authentication, and performance.
• Monitoring, logging, capacity management, backup, recovery, and HA concepts.
• Commitment to Southern Style values.
• Professional oral and written communication.
• Awareness of impact on budget.

Responsibilities

• Administer, configure, and maintain the Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) for secure, scalable, and highly available automation.
• Manage platform components: automation controllers, execution environments, hub content, credential management, and integrations.
• Monitor platform health, performance, availability, and capacity for reliable automation services.
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues across platform, workflows, integrations, authentication, networking, and deployments.
• Perform platform lifecycle management: upgrades, patching, config changes, validation tests.
• Manage resources, deployments, storage, networking, and service configurations for automation workloads.
• Ensure high availability, backup, recovery, and disaster recovery capabilities.
• Collaborate with infra, security, app, and engineering teams to onboard use cases.
• Develop, maintain, and support reusable automation content, templates, and standards.
• Implement RBAC, credential management, secrets integration, and security controls.
• Support source control, CI/CD pipelines, and Git workflows for automation solutions.
• Respond to incidents within SLAs; participate in on-call rotations as needed.
• Develop and maintain platform documentation, diagrams, procedures, and guides.
• Provide capacity planning and recommendations for growth and optimization.
• Offer governance and best practices to promote enterprise automation adoption.
• Evaluate new capabilities and integrations to improve efficiency and user experience.

Skills

Automation concepts

Communication skills

Troubleshooting

Analytical thinking

Team collaboration

Education

BS/BA in CS/IS/Engineering

Tools

Ansible Automation Platform (AAP)

Git-based workflows

Job description

Job Summary

The Platform Engineer is responsible for the administration, maintenance, optimization, and support of the Ansible Automation Platform (AAP). This role ensures the reliability, scalability, security, and performance of the enterprise automation platform by managing containerized application deployments, platform lifecycle operations, cluster-integrated services, persistent storage, networking, and identity integrations. The Platform Engineer enables Southern Company teams to automate infrastructure and application processes efficiently by providing a stable, highly available automation platform while driving continuous improvement, governance, and adoption of automation capabilities across the IT environment.

Job Summary

The Platform Engineer is responsible for the administration, maintenance, optimization, and support of the Ansible Automation Platform (AAP). This role ensures the reliability, scalability, security, and performance of the enterprise automation platform by managing containerized application deployments, platform lifecycle operations, cluster-integrated services, persistent storage, networking, and identity integrations. The Platform Engineer enables Southern Company teams to automate infrastructure and application processes efficiently by providing a stable, highly available automation platform while driving continuous improvement, governance, and adoption of automation capabilities across the IT environment.

Job Requirements

• BS/BA in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent work experience


• Demonstrated knowledge of enterprise automation platforms, infrastructure automation, and configuration management concepts


• Experience administering or supporting Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) and related automation technologies


• Working knowledge of container orchestration, application deployment lifecycles, and platform services


• Understanding of Linux operating systems, networking, storage, and identity management concepts


• Knowledge of infrastructure-as-code, Git-based workflows, and automation best practices


• Basic knowledge of security controls, privileged access management, secrets management, and compliance requirements


• Demonstrate strong communication and influence skills to encourage adoption of automation standards, reusable solutions, and platform best practices


• General knowledge of Southern Company's core business


• Ability to effectively organize tasks, manage multiple priorities/details, meet schedules, and deliver on customer commitments


• Ability to negotiate with and influence others, both internally and with vendors


• Ability to build relationships and work in a team atmosphere as well as work independently


• Ability to provide and accept feedback


• Strong analytical, troubleshooting, and problem-solving skills


• Experience troubleshooting platform issues involving automation workflows, integrations, networking, authentication, and system performance


• Understanding of platform monitoring, logging, capacity management, backup, recovery, and high-availability concepts


• Demonstrate Southern Style: Unquestionable Trust, Superior Performance, and Total Commitment


• Professional oral and written communication skills


• Understanding of how their activities impact function budget

Major Job Responsibilities

• Administer, configure, and maintain the Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) to provide a secure, scalable, and highly available enterprise automation service.


• Manage platform components including automation controllers, execution environments, automation hub content, credential management, and integrations with enterprise systems.


• Monitor platform health, performance, availability, and capacity to ensure reliable operation of automation services.


• Troubleshoot and resolve platform, automation workflow, integration, authentication, networking, and application deployment issues.


• Perform platform lifecycle management activities including upgrades, patching, configuration changes, and validation testing.


• Manage platform resources, application deployments, storage, networking, and service configurations to support automation workloads.


• Implement and maintain high availability, backup, recovery, and disaster recovery capabilities for the automation platform.


• Collaborate with infrastructure, security, application, and engineering teams to onboard automation use cases and integrate enterprise technologies with the platform.


• Develop, maintain, and support reusable automation content, templates, workflows, execution environments, and platform standards.


• Implement and maintain role-based access controls (RBAC), credential management, secrets integration, and security controls to protect platform resources.


• Support source code management, CI/CD pipelines, and Git-based workflows used to develop, test, and deploy automation solutions.


• Respond to and resolve incidents within defined SLAs, including participation in on-call and after-hours support rotations as needed.


• Develop and maintain platform documentation, architecture diagrams, operational procedures, standards, and support guides.


• Perform capacity planning and provide recommendations for platform growth, performance optimization, and resource utilization.


• Provide technical guidance, governance, and best practices to encourage adoption of enterprise automation standards and reusable solutions.


• Evaluate and implement new platform capabilities, integrations, and automation technologies to improve operational efficiency and customer experience.

This position falls under the company’s Insider Threat Program and will have access to, and control over sensitive data, systems or assets. Enhanced personnel screening, which includes a background review, drug screen and psychological assessment, will be required if you are selected for this position

About Southern Company

Southern Company (NYSE: SO ) is a leading energy provider serving 9 million customers across the Southeast and beyond through its family of companies. Providing clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy with excellent service is our mission. The company has electric operating companies in three states, natural gas distribution companies in four states, a competitive generation company, a leading distributed energy solutions provider with national capabilities, a fiber optics network and telecommunications services. Through an industry-leading commitment to innovation, resilience and sustainability, we are taking action to meet customers' and communities' needs while advancing our goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Our uncompromising values ensure we put the needs of those we serve at the center of everything we do and are the key to our sustained success. We are transforming energy into economic, environmental and social progress for tomorrow. Our corporate culture has been recognized by a variety of organizations, earning the company awards and recognitions that reflect Our Values and dedication to service. To learn more, visit www.southerncompany.com .

Southern Company invests in the well-being of its employees and their families through a comprehensive total rewards strategy that includes competitive base salary, annual incentive awards for eligible employees and health, welfare and retirement benefits designed to support physical, financial, and emotional/social well-being. This position may also be eligible for additional compensation, such as an incentive program, with the amount of any bonus/awards subject to the terms and conditions of the applicable incentive plan(s). A summary of the benefits offered for this position can be found here https://seo.nlx.org/southernco/pdf/SOCO-Benefits.pdf . Additional and specific details about total compensation and benefits will also be provided during the hiring process.

Southern Company is an equal opportunity employer where an applicant's qualifications are considered without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other basis prohibited by law.

Job Identification: 21068

Job Category: Information Technology

Job Schedule: Full time

Company: Southern Company Services