Network Automation Platform Engineer

Drew Mallett
Automating Networks at Scale

I build API-driven orchestration platforms that take a request and turn it into validated, staged, reversible production change — across a 200+ site global enterprise and a multi-tenant private-cloud fabric segmented into 130+ per-tenant VRFs, where isolation, security, and auditability are non-negotiable.

See what I've built
130+
Per-Tenant VRFs Segmented
200+
Global Sites Supported
150+
Multi-Vendor Discovery Functions
$1M+
Commercial Platform Retired

What I Build

The orchestration layer for safe change

From an API request to validated, staged, reversible production change — a platform that lets teams (and their clients) move faster without giving up isolation, security, or auditability across a multi-tenant private-cloud fabric.

🔌
API-Driven Orchestration & Execution
The execution engine behind operator and self-service tooling: an inbound API request becomes a planned change — validated against the live model, gated on a ServiceNow change record, executed as staged configuration, then verified and auto-rolled-back on failure. Turns "make this change" into safe production change without hand-work.
REST API Plan → CR → Execute Staged Rollout Auto Rollback
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Multi-Tenant Segmentation & Isolation
Automation and modeling across a multi-tenant private-cloud fabric segmented into 130+ per-tenant VRFs on EVPN-VXLAN and MPLS L3VPN — with API access governed by RBAC and service-scoped result filtering, so every tenant sees and touches only its own environment, end to end.
130+ VRFs EVPN-VXLAN MPLS L3VPN Tenant-Scoped RBAC
🔍
Vendor-Agnostic Discovery & Modeling
A vendor-agnostic discovery framework grown to 150+ functions across Cisco, Arista, Palo Alto, Fortinet, A10, and Juniper — normalizing multi-vendor data into a single source of truth that keeps 10K+ ServiceNow CMDB items accurate and feeds graph-based path analysis and syslog-driven site-health analytics.
Cisco / Arista Palo Alto Fortinet A10 / Juniper Graph Path Analysis
⚙️
Safe, Governed Change at Scale
Production changes protected by per-device, state-based concurrency control and retry-safe Kafka consumers built to survive partial failure without duplicate work — plus golden-template drift detection with policy-driven remediation and a fabric pipeline that executes through Arista CloudVision and rolls back snapshotted state.
Kafka Concurrency Control Drift Detection CloudVision
🚨
SOC Threat-Block & WAF Security
A SOC-integrated threat-block process with database-backed IP, FQDN, and URL enforcement that cut external-threat remediation from hours to minutes — plus a WAF security-posture dashboard driving weekly reviews and tracked remediation with the security team.
SOC Integration IP / FQDN / URL WAF Posture Imperva / QRadar
☁️
Cloud, CI/CD & Platform Delivery
The platform runs on AWS EKS provisioned as code with Terraform (VPC, IAM/IRSA, SSM, Route 53, CloudWatch) behind NGINX ingress, shipped through Git/GitHub/Jenkins with revert-based rollback and independently versioned blueprint repos — continuously audited by Snyk and Wiz.
AWS / EKS Terraform CI/CD Snyk / Wiz

Proof It Pays Off

Retired a $1M+ commercial firewall-policy product with an in-house build

The orchestration model above, applied to firewall change: an in-house platform covering the full request lifecycle — submission, approval, validation, execution, and closure — replaced a $1M+ commercial product and eliminated its $100K annual renewal.

$100K
Annual renewal
eliminated

Technology

Full-stack, production-grade

Every technology chosen for a reason. No cargo-culting.

Network Vendors

  • Cisco (NX-OS / IOS-XR / IOS-XE)
  • Arista EOS
  • Palo Alto / Panorama
  • Fortinet
  • A10 Networks
  • Juniper

Development

  • Python / Flask
  • JavaScript / AngularJS
  • Bootstrap / HTML / CSS
  • REST APIs
  • Ansible / pyATS

Data & Messaging

  • ArangoDB (document + graph)
  • InfluxDB (time-series)
  • OpenSearch
  • Kafka
  • Redis / RQ

Enterprise & Security

  • ServiceNow (CMDB / ITSM)
  • Infoblox (IPAM)
  • Imperva / QRadar
  • Wiz / Snyk
  • RBAC (LDAP / AD / SSO)

Cloud & DevOps

  • AWS (EKS, VPC, IAM/IRSA, SSM)
  • Kubernetes (EKS, Rancher)
  • Terraform / NGINX
  • Git / GitHub / Jenkins
  • Oracle Linux

Networking

  • EVPN-VXLAN / MPLS L3VPN
  • MP-BGP / BGP / OSPF
  • Arista CloudVision
  • Palo Alto / Fortinet
  • Data-center fabric

Background

14 years, one company, two acquisitions

From NOC intern to Expert Network Engineer — growing with the same organization through the Acxiom → Interpublic Group → Omnicom acquisitions, from hands-on routing and switching to designing an enterprise-scale automation platform.

🎓
B.S. Information Technology
Western Governors University
☁️
AWS Cloud Practitioner
Active · through 2027
📋
ITIL® Foundation
IT Service Management
⚙️
Expert Network Engineer
Omnicom · Oct 2022–Present
Certifications
AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Amazon Web Services — Nov 2024 · exp. Nov 2027
Active
ITIL® Foundation
AXELOS — Mar 2017
Active
CCNP Switch
Cisco — Mar 2015
Expired
CCNA Routing & Switching
Cisco — Mar 2012
Expired
Education
B.S., Information Technology
Western Governors University — 2010–2014
A.A., General Education
UA Community College at Morrilton — 2008–2010
Feb 2012 – 2016
Network Engineer · Acxiom
Progressed from NOC intern to network engineer supporting enterprise and data-center infrastructure. Monitored large-scale environments, responded to service-impacting events, and troubleshot routing, switching, firewall, and application-connectivity problems. Executed changes, upgrades, and maintenance under established change-management procedures, and partnered with senior engineers on deployments and service implementations. Earned CCNA R&S and CCNP Switch during this period.
2016 – Oct 2022
Senior Network Engineer · Acxiom → Interpublic Group
Introduced automation to the NOC/NetEng, moving daily operations from manual CLI work to Python and Ansible. Built the first multi-vendor configuration backup, discovery, and standards-compliance tooling for Cisco, Palo Alto, and A10 estates, and helped build the initial Python/Flask platform — the REST API, data model, and discovery framework that evolved into today's platform. Served as escalation point for complex application, compliance, and performance problems; designed performance-monitoring and SPAN/TAP visibility architectures with packet analysis in Wireshark and Riverbed. Earned ITIL Foundation in 2017.
Oct 2022 – Present
Expert Network Engineer · Interpublic Group → Omnicom
Core contributor on a three-person team behind the API-driven automation platform for global enterprise and data-center operations — supporting a 200+ site network and dual Arista spine-leaf VXLAN EVPN fabrics (130+ VRFs) over a Cisco MPLS backbone. Retired a $1M+ commercial firewall-policy product with an in-house full-lifecycle replacement; grew the vendor-agnostic discovery framework to 150+ functions; synchronized 10K+ ServiceNow CMDB items; and delivered SOC threat-block automation (hours → minutes), AIOps site analytics, and Palo Alto→Fortinet / Cisco→Arista migrations. Hardened production change with state-based concurrency control, retry-safe Kafka consumers, RBAC, and CloudVision fabric pipelines with automatic rollback — deployed across Oracle Linux and AWS EKS provisioned with Terraform and audited by Snyk and Wiz.
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Measurable Business Impact
Retired a $1M+ commercial product and a $100K annual renewal with an in-house replacement.
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Full-Stack Ownership
SSH on the wire to the web UI — every layer designed and built, across 150+ discovery functions.
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Security-First Engineering
SOC threat-block automation (hours → minutes), firewall policy control, RBAC, and Snyk/Wiz auditing.
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Enterprise Integration
ServiceNow, Infoblox, AWS, Imperva, QRadar, OpenSearch — unified into one source of truth.
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ITSM & Change Management
ITIL-certified. Every production change follows formal process — from design through implementation and review.
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Cloud & Infrastructure as Code
AWS (EKS, VPC, IAM) provisioned with Terraform, wired into Git, GitHub, and Jenkins CI/CD pipelines.

Get in touch

Let's talk automation

Building something in the network automation space? Always happy to compare notes.

GitHub LinkedIn dmalle90@gmail.com