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 tightly collaborate with internal Service Assurance and Service Delivery teams to gather requirements, transfer knowledge about the developed automation processes, and receive feedback about the required improvements and changes. You are not a pure QA resource since you are an automation developer who also ensures what is built is verifiably correct and operates as expected by the end users.

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

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

Cooperate with internal Service Assurance and Service Delivery teams by fostering knowledge transfer, gathering requirements, and jointly identifying next steps in developing new automated workflows and processes

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

Act as first line contact and support line for internal Service Assurance and Service Delivery concerning OSS automated processes and workflows already introduced into production

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 OSS/BSS 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

Familiarity with telecom OSS concepts like FCAPS, TMF eTOM framework or similar operational support system concepts

Practical exposure to network operations workflows and/or service assurance processes

Working knowledge of NETCONF/YANG, SNMP, or TMF Open APIs as integration surfaces for automation workflows

Familiarity with OSS platforms, NMS/EMS systems, or network simulation tools used for test environment setup

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, NETCONF/YANG

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.