Automation Engineer

**Who we are:** Hi, we’re SambaSafety and we offer the industry’s most comprehensive driver monitoring software. Our mission is promoting safer communities by reducing risk through data insights. Companies trust SambaSafety to keep their employees safe on the roads, price and reduce risk, help protect their brand, their bottom line, and our global community. We’ve built an inclusive, supportive, and exceptional culture where every employee is empowered in their role. Don’t take our word for it; we’ve been recognized as a Top Workplace by [The Denver Post](https://sambasafety.com/blog/top-workplace-in-co-2020/), Albuquerque Journal, Sacramento Bee, and [Built In Colorado](https://sambasafety.com/blog/sambasafety-named-top-company-to-work-for-in-colorado/). And our employees rate SambaSafety as top-notch, with a rock solid [Top Rating on Glassdoor](https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/SambaSafety-Reviews-EI_IE446025.0,11.htm?sort.sortType=RD&sort.ascending=false&filter.defaultEmploymentStatuses=true&filter.defaultLocation=true&filter.language=eng). **What You’ll Do:** We are seeking a Software Operations Automation Engineer to design, implement, and maintain automation that eliminates repetitive manual work and improves reliability across our operational workflows. You will build robust, scalable pipelines and services—centered on Apache Airflow and scripting—to automate file movement, scheduled FTP jobs, application health checks, data validation and remediation, log/table-driven alerting, and email-triggered actions. - **Workflow Orchestration:** Design, develop, and maintain DAGs in **Apache Airflow** to schedule and coordinate operational tasks. - **Task Automation:** 1. Move files between systems/locations and **confirm successful sends/receives**. 2. Execute **FTP pickups** on defined schedules with retries and failure handling. 3. **Ensure applications are running** through automated health checks and restart routines. 4. Perform **database data validation** (referential integrity, threshold checks, anomaly detection). 5. **Alert** when specific conditions are identified in **log files** or **database tables**. 6. **Modify data** based on query results under controlled, auditable procedures. 7. **Consume emails** and trigger appropriate automated actions (e.g., parse inbox commands, route attachments, kick off jobs). - **Reliability Engineering:** Implement idempotent jobs, robust error handling, logging, and observability for all automation. - **Integrations:** Build and maintain **API-driven** integrations between internal/external systems. - **Security & Compliance:** Handle secrets/credentials securely; enforce RBAC; align automation with relevant compliance requirements. - **Collaboration & Enablement:** Partner with Operations, Data, Engineering, and Product teams to identify automation opportunities; document solutions; evangelize best practices. - **Monitoring & Support:** Proactively monitor pipelines and services; triage incidents; drive root-cause analysis and corrective actions. **What You’ll Need:** - **Apache Airflow**: Strong proficiency creating, scheduling, and monitoring DAGs; task dependencies; sensors; operators; Airflow UI usage. - **Scripting & Programming**: Advanced **Python** and **Shell** (bash/zsh); writing maintainable, testable automation code. - **SQL & Databases**: Solid understanding of SQL, query optimization, data validation patterns, and transactional safety. - **File/Transfer Automation**: Experience with **FTP/SFTP**, checksum verification, encryption, and secure transfer patterns. - **Monitoring & Observability**: Practical knowledge of log parsing, metrics, tracing, and alerting (e.g., building dashboards, threshold/condition-based alerts). - **Version Control**: Proficiency with **Git** (branching, PRs, code review). - **CI/CD**: Familiarity with pipelines to build, test, and deploy automation safely and repeatably. - **API Integration**: Comfortable with REST/SOAP, auth flows (OAuth2, API keys), and pagination/rate-limits. - **Error Handling & Logging**: Ability to design resilient jobs with retries/backoff, dead-letter queues, and structured logging. - **Secure Automation Practices**: Secrets management (e.g., vaults), least-privilege access, auditability, and compliance awareness. **Preferred Qualifications:** - **Containerization & Orchestration**: Experience with **Docker** and **Kubernetes** for packaging and running automation services. - **Cloud Platforms**: Exposure to **AWS** services (e.g., schedulers, queues, storage, serverless, IAM). - **ETL/Data Pipelines**: Background in ETL/ELT, data quality checks, and lineage. - **Advanced Observability**: Experience with tools like **Splunk**, **Prometheus**, **Grafana**, or similar. - **DevOps Practices**: Infrastructure-as-code, configuration management, and environment standardization. **Competencies (Soft Skills):** - **Problem Solving & Root Cause Analysis:** Methodical troubleshooting in production environments. - **Documentation & Communication:** Clear runbooks, diagrams, and stakeholder updates. - **Collaboration:** Comfortable pairing with ops, data engineers, software engineers, and product managers. - **Ownership & Prioritization:** Bias for automation-first solutions and measurable operational impact. **Success Metrics (KPIs):** - **% Manual Work Eliminated** for target workflows. - **MTTR** for automation-related incidents. - **Job Success Rate** and **On-Time Schedule Adherence**. - **Data Quality**: Validation pass rates, defect leakage reduction. - **Alert Quality**: Signal-to-noise ratio, actionable alert percentage. - **Change Safety**: Failed change rate, rollback frequency. **Tools & Technologies (Representative):** - **Core:** Apache Airflow, Python, bash, Git. - **Data:** SQL (PostgreSQL/MySQL/SQL Server), regex/log parsing. - **Ops/Infra:** Docker, Kubernetes (preferred), cloud services (AWS). - **Observability:** Splunk/ELK, Prometheus/Grafana, Airflow metrics. - **Messaging/Triggers:** Email ingestion, webhooks, queues (SQS/Service Bus/Kafka) as applicable. **Benefits and Perks:** - Flexible and generous Paid Time Off and Paid Volunteer Days - 401k Employer Match - Generous Healthcare Benefits - Up to 12 weeks paid time off for maternity leave based on tenure - Wellness &Tuition Reimbursement - Flexible Work Arrangements - Lots of SambaSafety swag & SambaSafety Events Our team of talented and committed safety professionals is exceptional. At SambaSafety we strive to foster an inclusive culture that supports, encourages and celebrates a wide array of diversity. We are committed to create a space where all employees can show up as their authentic selves every day, and we work to advance employee equality, diversity and inclusion. SambaSafety provides equal employment opportunities to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, gender identity, and expression or genetics. Come join us to find out for yourself what all the excitement is about!