- Location
- Riga, Latvia · AST - Latvia
- Department
- Engineering
- Experience
- 3+ years
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 Engineer to join the Latvia Design Center as the primary owner of network and ground-segment lifecycle automation. This role builds and operates the production automation that executes real operational processes: zero-touch provisioning, site and service acceptance before commercial traffic is enabled, in-service configuration management and drift detection, and fault/alarm handling. A defining characteristic of this role is bridging with automation operational domains that today depend on manual coordination between teams and systems.
Key Responsibilities:
- Build, develop and deploy AST’s internal automation processes within AST OSS platform – provisioning automation, configuration management, fault & alarm handling automation, cross domain orchestration and integration
- Translate architectural specifications, interface control documents (ICDs), and functional & non-functional requirements into clean, well-tested, production-ready code
- Write modular, maintainable software following team coding standards, with appropriate documentation and code comments
- Implement and maintain integration tests, regression suites, and performance benchmarks for the developed software components
- Participate in design and code reviews, providing and receiving constructive technical feedback
- Support system-level integration testing ensuring delivered software meets acceptance criteria
- Work within the team’s agile delivery process: contribute to sprint planning, maintain backlog hygiene, and deliver consistently against milestone commitments
- Maintain technical documentation: component specifications, API contracts, test results, and runbooks
- Engage with other internal teams to clarify requirements, validate assumptions, and ensure delivered software meets operational needs
Qualifications
Education:
Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Telecommunications Engineering, or a related field — or equivalent professional experience.
Experience:
A minimum of 3+ years of professional experience in network or business process automation, or a combined network/software engineering role in live-network operational environment.
- Proven experience building production automation/orchestration workflows that execute real operational processes, not just test or CI/CD automation
- Hands-on experience with at least one of Temporal, Apache Airflow, or AWS Step Functions for sequencing multi-step, stateful, or long-running workflows
- Strong proficiency in Python or Go for automation and integration logic
- Experience with network configuration automation tooling (e.g. Ansible, Netmiko/NAPALM, or vendor-specific APIs)
- Working knowledge of event-driven integration via Kafka/Protobuf
- Working knowledge of AWS fundamentals (compute, networking, VPN/Transit Gateway, managed streaming)
- Understanding of FCAPS concepts and alarm/fault management models (e.g. ITU-T X.733)
- Practical experience instrumenting automation with OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, or equivalent
- English proficiency at B2 level or above; able to collaborate effectively with peers and architects in a globally distributed team
Soft Skills:
- Bridge-builder mindset - comfortable being the person who turns a process that spans three teams' systems into a single governed pipeline
- High ownership - takes end-to-end accountability for automation from design through live operation, including what happens when it fails
- Sound judgment on automation boundaries - knows which operational decisions genuinely need a human and which don’t, rather than automating everything indiscriminately
- Rigorous but pragmatic - applies the same discipline to acceptance/go-live automation as to a live network incident, since both carry real consequences
Technology Stack:
- AWS Step Functions, Temporal, Apache Airflow
- Python or Go
- Ansible, Netmiko/NAPALM, vendor-specific network APIs
- REST, gRPC, TMF Open APIs
- Kafka/Protobuf (AWS MSK)
- OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana
- AWS (EC2, Lambda, Step Functions, MSK, VPN/Transit Gateway)
- Git, Azure DevOps CI
- Jira, Confluence
- Markdown, 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.
