OSS Test & Automation Engineer

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 Test & Automation Engineer to join the team responsible for developing our core network platform – OSS. In this role, you will act as the primary owner of OSS workflow automation development and test engineering. Your primary focus will be to build, test, document and maintain automation processes executed within the OSS platform - covering network operations, service assurance, reporting, and partner integration workflows. At the same time, you will own the test strategy and quality assurance practices that validate and verify those autonomous processes and workflows.

You are not a pure QA resource; you are an automation engineer who designs solutions and ensures their correctness through robust validation and testing practices.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, develop, and maintain automation workflows and orchestration scripts executed within our own OSS platform, covering network operations, fault management, service assurance, reporting, and inventory
• Own and grow the automation backlog - identify manual, error-prone, or repetitive operational processes as candidates for automation, estimate effort, and drive items through to production delivery
• Design, implement, and maintain automated test suites that validate automation workflows under both nominal and fault/edge-case conditions
• Develop and maintain test environments, stubs, and simulators needed to test OSS workflows in isolation from live network components
• Execute test plans, document results, track defects, and drive resolution in collaboration with all involved internal teams
• Produce clear test documentation of test plans, test cases, test reports, and coverage summaries
• Build and maintain dashboards and automated reports to track performance of automated tasks and workflows to internal teams
• Proactively identify automation failures, performance degradations, or reliability issues and drive root-cause analysis and remediation
• Continuously improve automation reliability, coverage, and maintainability based on operational feedback and incident learnings
• Maintain clear, accurate documentation for all automation workflows introduced

Qualifications

Education:

Bachelor’s degree in computer science, engineering, telecommunications or a related field — or equivalent professional experience.

Experience & Qualifications:

• A minimum of 3+ years of professional experience in automation engineering, test engineering, or a combined software/QA role, preferably in telecom, network operations, or complex IT systems.
• Proven experience designing and building automation workflows, orchestration scripts, or operational automation pipelines — not just test scripts
• Solid proficiency in Python or any other scripting language and familiarity with modern test frameworks (e.g. pytest, Robot)
• Familiarity with at least one workflow orchestration or BPM tool (e.g. Camunda, Apache Airflow, Ansible, or similar)
• Ability to query and manipulate data in SQL and/or NoSQL databases
• Strong command of test strategy design, test case development, test automation frameworks, and defect lifecycle management
• Hands-on experience integrating automation with REST APIs and event-driven messaging systems (e.g. Kafka, RabbitMQ, SQS)
• Experience embedding quality gates and automated tests into CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or equivalent)
• Practical experience with monitoring and logging tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, or equivalent) for making automated workflows observable in production
• Comfortable developing, deploying, and debugging automation in Linux

Soft Skills:

• Strong problem-solving mindset with a bias toward automation and operational efficiency
• Collaborative and communicative — comfortable working in a globally distributed team
• Ownership mentality - take responsibility for end-to-end reliability of systems under your care
• Adaptable and self-directed, with the ability to manage competing priorities in a fast-paced environment
• Meticulous attention to detail in documentation, change management, and operational procedures

Technology Stack:

• Python (automation, scripting, test frameworks)
• Camunda, Apache Airflow, Ansible, or equivalent BPM/orchestration tooling
• Pytest, Robot Framework, or equivalent
• Postman, requests library, or similar
• GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, ArgoCD
• Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack, structured logging
• REST, gRPC, Kafka, RabbitMQ, TMF Open APIs (awareness), NETCONF/YANG (awareness)
• Databases:
  • PostgreSQL / MySQL (SQL)
  • MongoDB, Cassandra, or equivalent (NoSQL)
  • InfluxDB or similar (Time-series DBs)
• Docker, Kubernetes (working knowledge for deploying automation workloads)
• Git (GitHub / GitLab)
• Confluence, test case management tools (e.g. TestRail, Xray, or equivalent)

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.