Linux & Ansible Automation Specialist

Contract Role: Linux Engineer & Ansible Automation Specialist
Location: London (Hybrid - 3 days a week onsite)
Rate: £600-£700 per day (Inside IR35)
Length: 6-month contract

A leading organisation is seeking an experienced Ansible Automation Specialist to join their Enterprise Technology team. This hands-on role will focus on uplifting Ansible usage, enhancing automation workflows, and improving infrastructure security and reliability across a Linux environment.

Key Responsibilities:

• Refactor and optimise Ansible playbooks and roles for maintainability, security, and robustness

• Improve pre-checks, conditional logic, error handling, and reporting

• Integrate with secret management systems such as CyberArk and Ansible Vault

• Enhance Ansible inventory management and automation scheduling

• Build reusable templates for ad-hoc tasks and remediation

• Develop automation for CIS compliance and reporting

• Contribute to Molecule testing environments for Ansible roles

• Collaborate with Linux, Infrastructure, and InfoSec teams

Essential Skills & Experience:

• Expert-level understanding of Ansible Core and CLI

• Strong background in Linux systems engineering and automation

• Proven track record of writing secure, idempotent, and testable playbooks

• Experience with secret management tools (eg CyberArk, Ansible Vault)

• Knowledge of Linux patch management, system hardening, and CIS compliance

• Strong problem-solving, documentation, and communication skills

Desirable:

• Experience with Molecule testing for Ansible roles

• Familiarity with Ansible Automation Platform (AAP)

• Understanding of SSH key management and privilege separation