OSS & Automation Architect

AST SpaceMobile; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 150,000 - 210,000; Full time

Job summary

AST SpaceMobile is seeking an OSS & Automation Architect to bridge business stakeholders and the OSS engineering team, translating needs into precise, buildable specifications.

You will collaborate with the OSS SW Platform Architect on ADRs, FRs, and NFRs, ensuring architecture reflects real operational needs and the automation roadmap is prioritized.

Qualifications

• Deep OSS functions knowledge and integration with IT landscape.
• Experience with OSS platforms (Ericsson OSSA, Nokia NSP, NetCracker, Amdocs, Rakuten Symphony).
• Familiarity with TM Forum Open APIs and eTOM/TAM frameworks.
• Background in ITIL-aligned service management processes, especially service assurance and incident workflows.
• Experience with workflow/BPM tooling from requirements/design perspective.
• Ability to elicit/structure deliver FRs and NFRs from stakeholders for engineering use.

Responsibilities

• Act as primary liaison for internal customers representing the OSS program on-site.
• Capture business processes, pain points, and automation opportunities for engineering hand-off.
• Translate business requirements into Functional and Non-Functional Requirements.
• Contribute context and constraints to design decisions.
• Define automation requirements for OSS workflows and governance rules.
• Identify integration points between OSS and ERP/CRM/Jira and other tools.
• Design governance for automated decisions and state-machine logic.
• Participate in sprint reviews and validate functionality against acceptance criteria.
• Maintain documentation and roadmap of automation opportunities.

Skills

OSS domain knowledge

Requirements elicitation

FRs and NFRs

BPM tooling (Camunda/Airflow/ServiceDo

REST APIs / data contracts

Education

Bachelor's or Master's in CS/Telecom

Tools

Camunda

Apache Airflow

ServiceNow

Jira

Job description

AST SpaceMobile is building the first and only global cellular broadband network in space to operate directly with standard, unmodified mobile devices based on our extensive IP and patent portfolio and designed for both commercial and government applications. Our engineers and space scientists are on a mission to eliminate the connectivity gaps faced by today’s five billion mobile subscribers and finally bring broadband to the billions who remain unconnected.

Position Overview

We are seeking an OSS & Automation Architect to serve as the technical bridge between AST's internal stakeholders and the AST OSS engineering team. This is a dual-facing role - outward toward internal business stakeholders and teams in Service Assurance, Service Delivery, and Service Enablement; and inward toward the OSS engineering team and other technical teams to translate what those stakeholders need into precise, buildable specifications.

You will work in close conjunction with the OSS SW Platform Architect, contributing to Architecture Decision Records (ADRs), Functional Requirements (FRs), and Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) that shape the AST OSS platform. Where the Platform Architect sets the technical direction, you own the requirements surface - ensuring the architecture reflects real operational needs and that the OSS platform team is never building on assumptions.

This role requires equal command of business process analysis and OSS/automation domain knowledge. You must be credible in discussion with business process owners and equally credible in a design session with a technical team.

Key Responsibilities

• Act as the primary liaison for internal customers - Service Assurance, Service Delivery, Service Enablement, and adjacent teams - representing the OSS program on-site
• Capture business processes, operational pain points, and automation opportunities with the depth needed for engineering hand-off
• Translate business requirements into well-structured Functional Requirements (FRs) and Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs)
• Contribute requirements context and operational constraints to every major design decision
• Define automation requirements for OSS workflows - fault management, performance management, configuration management, and partner on-boarding - translating manual operational processes into automation specs
• Identify and design integration points between OSS and internal systems (ERP, CRM, Jira, custom tooling)
• Identify candidates for workflow automation, define governance rules, and specify the business logic that drives automated decisions
• Participate in sprint reviews and architecture sessions with the OSS platform team and validate delivered functionality against acceptance requirements
• Maintain documentation for all business processes, requirements decisions, and OSS capability mapping
• Create and maintain a roadmap of automation opportunities ranked by operational impact
• Proactively surface new automation and integration opportunities from ongoing stakeholder engagement, without waiting for formal project kick-offs

Qualifications

Education:

Bachelor's or master's degree in computer science, Telecommunications Engineering, or a related field - or equivalent professional experience.

Experience:

• Deep working knowledge of OSS functions - fault management, service provisioning, performance management, service assurance - and how they integrate with downstream enterprise IT landscape
• Hands-on experience with commercial OSS platforms (Ericsson OSSA, Nokia NSP, NetCracker, Amdocs, Rakuten Symphony or other)
• Experience with TM Forum Open APIs and the eTOM/TAM business process and application frameworks
• Background in ITIL-aligned service management processes, particularly service assurance and incident management workflows
• Experience with workflow and BPM tooling (Camunda, Airflow, ServiceNow, or equivalent) from a requirements or design perspective
• Proven ability to elicit, structure, and deliver FRs and NFRs from business stakeholders in a form directly usable by an engineering team
• Experience specifying workflow automation for telecom operations: trigger conditions, state machines, exception handling, and governance rules for automated decisions
• Experience specifying integrations between OSS and adjacent systems (ERP, CRM) familiarity with REST APIs, event-driven integration, and data contract design

Soft Skills

• Naturally translates between the language of operations "we need to know when a handover fails" and the language of engineering "define the fault event schema and notification SLA" without losing fidelity in either direction
• Impose clarity on ambiguous stakeholder inputs - produce artefacts that leave no room for the technical team to guess at intent
• Do not wait for requirements to be handed over - actively hunt for process gaps, automation opportunities, and misalignments before they become delivery problems
• Skilled at maintaining productive working relationships with a team several time zones away
• Requirements artefacts are exact, versioned, and traceable - consider edge cases and exception flows, not just happy paths

Technology Stack

• RESTful APIs, AsyncAPI & event-driven messaging (Kafka, RabbitMQ), TMF Open APIs, NETCONF/YANG, SNMP
• Camunda, Apache Airflow or equivalent BPM tooling
• TM Forum eTOM/TAM, TOGAF or ArchiMate (working knowledge)
• AWS, Docker, Kubernetes (working familiarity)
• Git (for specification and configuration artefact management, working knowledge)
• Confluence, JIRA, C4, draw.io, Mermaid, PlantUML

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.

AST SpaceMobile is an Equal Opportunity, at will Employer; employment is governed on the basis of merit, competence and qualifications and will not be influenced in any manner by race, color, religion, gender, national origin/ethnicity, veteran status, disability status, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, mental or physical disability or any other legally protected status.