Lead Infrastructure Automation Engineer (SRE/AI)

Location: Heredia Costa Rica

This is a senior, hands-on Individual Contributor (IC) role designed to be the primary engine of our "No Ops" transformation. The Lead Infrastructure Automation Engineer will act as a subject matter expert, solution architect, and hands-on developer responsible for designing and implementing the high-impact automation and Agentic AI solutions that will redefine our operational model.

This role is for a versatile technologist who is passionate about eliminating toil, building intelligent systems, and applying AI to solve real-world infrastructure problems at enterprise scale. Your mission will be to tackle our most pressing operational challenges by architecting and developing robust, scalable automation platforms. This is a strategic, long-term role focused on continuous evolution and driving a fundamental shift in how we operate.

Core Responsibilities

• AI-Driven Automation & System Design

• Architect, design, and develop the core frameworks for our agentic AI and automation initiatives, utilizing platforms like ARC, ServiceNow, and Ansible.
• Act as the lead hands-on developer for creating intelligent, event-driven systems that can autonomously diagnose and remediate infrastructure issues.
• Ensure solutions are scalable, resilient, and maintainable, applying SRE and software engineering best practices to our operational code.

• Intelligent Incident & Problem Management

• Engineer solutions for automated root cause analysis, leveraging AIOps platforms and machine learning concepts to move from reactive to predictive operations.
• Develop systems that can intelligently correlate events from disparate monitoring tools (Netcool, Spectrum, Splunk) to identify systemic issues before they escalate.
• Build and refine self-healing capabilities for our network and server infrastructure, reducing MTTR for common failure scenarios.

• End-to-End Process & Workflow Automation

• Analyze and re-engineer core operational processes—including Change Management, Incident Task Management, and hardware provisioning—to be automation-first.
• Utilize Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) principles to codify and automate routine procedures, ensuring consistency and compliance.
• Develop integrations between our core platforms (SNOW, Ansible, ARC) to create seamless, end-to-end automated workflows that require minimal human intervention.

• Service Modernization & Shift-Left Enablement

• Act as a technical leader for absorbing new workstreams, such as the recent transfer of L1 Application Support, by identifying and automating the associated operational toil.
• Consult with other teams across Foundational Services to design "shift-left" solutions, where ECC's automation platform can take on operational tasks from higher-level support teams.
• Continuously evaluate new technologies and methodologies to ensure our operational capabilities evolve with the firm's needs.
• Initial Key Initiatives (Examples of Problems to Solve)
• To make this tangible, your initial focus will be on leading the design and delivery of our four highest-priority initiatives, which are foundational to our "No Ops" strategy and have a committed ROI:
• Distributed & Network Hardware Incident Automation: Build an AI-driven system to auto-diagnose hardware failures (servers, network gear) and trigger automated remediation or replacement workflows.
• End-to-End Change Automation: Automate the full lifecycle of standard hardware changes (create, review, implement, validate) using Ansible and ServiceNow.
• ITASK & Workflow Orchestration: Use NLP and agentic AI to auto-generate and manage dependent tasks (e.g., LCON dispatches, RMA tracking), removing manual coordination.
• L1 Application Support Toil Elimination: Analyze the newly absorbed L1 App Support workload and deploy automation to handle high-volume, low-complexity tasks.

Secondary Responsibilities

Automation Evangelism & Mentorship: Act as a subject matter expert and mentor to junior analysts, evangelizing "automation-first" principles and contributing to upskilling the team.

Continuous Improvement: Proactively identify new process gaps and inefficiencies, proposing and implementing data-driven improvements to enhance operational stability and efficiency.

Required Experience & Expertise

• 7+ years in enterprise infrastructure, with a strong background in either Network Operations or Systems Administration (Linux/Windows) in a 24/7 environment.
• Proven, hands-on experience designing and building automation solutions that eliminate manual operational work.
• Advanced proficiency in automation and IaC tools, particularly Ansible and Terraform. Must be able to write, maintain, and debug complex playbooks and modules.
• Strong scripting and development skills in Python. Experience with building operational tools, data processing scripts, or interacting with APIs is required.
• Experience applying AI/ML concepts to operational problems. This includes implementing solutions using AIOps platforms (Moogsoft, Datadog AI, etc.) and/or leveraging AI agentic frameworks (like ARC, LangChain, AutoGen) for intelligent automation.
• Deep understanding of observability principles and hands-on experience with platforms like Splunk, Elastic, Prometheus, or Grafana.
• Expert-level cross-domain troubleshooting skills across network, server, and application layers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a dedicated SRE or DevOps Engineering role.
• Experience with generative AI and LLMs for operational use cases (code generation, documentation, chatbot development).
• Familiarity with financial services or other highly regulated industries.
• Relevant certifications (e.g., AWS/Azure/GCP, CKA, HashiCorp, CCNP, RHCE).

Job Family Group

Technology

------------------------------------------------------

Job Family

Infrastructure

------------------------------------------------------

Time Type

Full time

------------------------------------------------------

Most Relevant Skills

Please see the requirements listed above.

------------------------------------------------------

Other Relevant Skills

For complementary skills, please see above and/or contact the recruiter.

------------------------------------------------------

Citi is an equal opportunity employer, and qualified candidates will receive consideration without regard to their race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other characteristic protected by law.

If you are a person with a disability and need a reasonable accommodation to use our search tools and/or apply for a career opportunity review Accessibility at Citi.

View Citi’s EEO Policy Statement and the Know Your Rights poster.