Director, Network Automation & Tooling

Job Description:Building trusted markets — powered by our people.At Cboe Global Markets, we inspire our people to solve complex challenges together because what we do matters. We provide the financial infrastructure that powers the global economy. As a leading provider of market infrastructure and tradable products, Cboe delivers cutting-edge trading, clearing and investment solutions to market participants around the world. We’re building meaningful ways to support professional and personal development while strengthening the trust we’ve earned as a global market leader. Our teams are empowered to share ideas, actively pursue them and bring on a challenge. As champions of internal mobility and access to opportunity, we encourage our people to “go for it” and equip our managers with the training to coach their teams to the next level. We strive to provide employees a safe space to network, share ideas and create opportunities. To support strong partnership and team connection, this role follows a four day in office work model.Location OverviewCboe HQ is located in the historic Old Post Office district, it’s a landmark that blends classic architecture with modern amenities. The building features expansive spaces with high ceilings and large windows, offering an abundance of natural light and panoramic views of the city skyline and the Chicago River.With its prime location in the heart of downtown, the OPO Building provides easy access to major transportation hubs, including Union Station and multiple CTA lines, making it convenient for commuters. The building is home to a variety of amenities, including restaurants, a fitness center, and collaborative workspaces, creating a vibrant and dynamic work environment in one of Chicago's most iconic areas.Role OverviewCboe's infrastructure footprint — and the telemetry stream it produces — is growing faster than our headcount can follow. We're hiring the leader who will close that gap with agents and intelligent automation, not more dashboards and runbooks. The Director, Network Automation & Tooling owns the strategy, architecture, and team behind the platform that lets Cboe's Operations and Engineering organizations operate at 10x their current capacity: a centralized Docker/Kubernetes backend hosting a growing fleet of AI agents, built and continuously extended with agentic coding tools such as Claude Code, that automate infrastructure operations across network, security, and telemetry domains. The intelligence layer is central to that mission. This team drives telemetry from across Cboe's global footprint — SNMP, gNMI, syslog, and API-based sources — into our Prometheus and Grafana observability platform, then builds on top of it: threshold alerting and trend analysis, and well beyond them, machine learning and agentic analysis that surface anomalies before they become incidents, correlate signals across domains, and sharpen how Operations and Engineering handle today's events and plan tomorrow's capacity. This is not a traditional infrastructure management role. It demands current technical credibility in container orchestration and infrastructure automation at scale, genuine fluency in emerging agentic AI patterns, and the leadership skill to guide subject matter experts across three domains as they extend an existing agent framework into Cboe's next-generation automation system. Agentic infrastructure engineering is being defined right now, and this leader will help define it at Cboe — setting the vision for how our network adapts to future demand, and carrying that thinking to the network and security teams who build on it and to associates across the firm. It's also hands-on. The Director stays close enough to the technology to review agent architectures, unblock hard problems, and extend the framework personally when it matters most.Your responsibilities will be:Team & Organizational LeadershipLead, mentor, and grow a multidisciplinary team of subject matter experts in network, security, and telemetry engineering, plus engineers focused on agent tooling and automation reliability. Own hiring, performance management, and career development for the automation function. Foster a culture of engineering excellence, disciplined execution, and agent-first thinking. Partner with peer Directors and VPs across Operations, Engineering, Security, and Network Engineering to align priorities and resourcing. Network Automation, Telemetry & Intelligent Alerting Own the systems that deliver automated configuration deployment across the network estate — Ansible today, and whatever proves better tomorrow — including source control, staged rollout, peer review, and reliable rollback. Build and maintain automations that continuously check device configuration against approved standards and baselines, surface drift, and progressively move the organization from detection toward automated enforcement. Deliver automated software and firmware upgrade tooling with rigorous pre- and post-change validation, so upgrades are repeatable, verifiable, and safe to run at scale. Build synthetic testing automations that routinely exercise critical infrastructure services and alert Operations the moment a service degrades or becomes unavailable. Own the strategy for how network, security, and telemetry data flows into Cboe's global Prometheus and Grafana observability platform, and for the analytics and automation built on top of it. Ensure telemetry from SNMP, gNMI, syslog, and API-based polling is captured and correlated across the global network and infrastructure footprint. Set the standards for alerting on critical network events, covering thresholds, escalation paths, noise reduction, and on-call integration, in partnership with Network Engineering and Operations. Advance the use of machine learning and agentic analysis for anomaly detection, trend and capacity forecasting, and eventual auto-remediation. Agentic Coding & Framework Extension Guide the technical direction of Cboe's existing agent framework, using agentic coding tools such as Claude Code to extend its capabilities. Establish engineering standards, guardrails, and review practices for agent-authored and agent-assisted changes to critical infrastructure. Stay hands-on enough to prototype, review, and unblock complex agent design and coding problems alongside the team. Champion responsible-AI practices, including human-in-the-loop controls, permissioning, and rollback safety, for autonomous agent actions. Drive advanced adoption of AI tooling across infrastructure teams, focusing first on network engineering and operations and expanding from there. Agentic Automation Strategy & Stakeholder PartnershipDefine and own the multi-year strategic vision for using AI agents to enable Operations and Engineering to scale to 10x their current capacity. Build and present the business case, ROI models, and executive-level roadmap for continued investment in the agent platform. Serve as the primary point of contact for Operations and Engineering leadership seeking to leverage agentic automation, translating operational pain points into automation opportunities and measurable capacity gains. Prioritize a portfolio of automation initiatives across network, security, and telemetry domains, balancing strategic bets with near-term wins. Track and report on capacity and efficiency metrics that demonstrate measurable progress toward the 10x goal. Represent the automation program in senior leadership and cross-functional forums, and act as an internal evangelist for agentic engineering practices. Governance, Security & RiskPartner with Information Security and Risk on governance frameworks for autonomous agents operating against production infrastructure.Ensure agent actions are logged, reviewable, and compliant with Cboe's change management and regulatory obligations. Own incident response and post-mortem processes for the automation platform.The ideal candidate hasA track record of conceiving something that didn't exist and then getting it built. Specifically:Original technical thinking that shipped. You identified a problem others were solving with more headcount or more tooling, proposed a fundamentally different approach, and delivered it. Ideally something that put your organization ahead of its peers rather than caught up with them.Executive partnership, not just executive reporting. You've taken an idea of your own to senior leadership, secured the funding or organizational support to pursue it, and stayed accountable for the outcome. You can point to a system or capability that exists today because you convinced people it should.Leadership of engineers doing genuinely new work. You've built and led teams operating without established playbooks, where the standards, patterns, and definitions of done had to be invented as you went — and you kept the work disciplined anyway.Hands-on fluency with Python and API-driven integration. You automate workflows in Python yourself, and you understand in detail how to code against the APIs of firewalls, routers, switches, logging systems, and other common third-party applications.Hands-on fluency with agentic development. You've personally built with agentic coding tools against real production problems, and you have opinions on where they work, where they fail, and what has to be true before an agent is allowed to touch critical infrastructure.Comfort being early. This discipline is a few years old. You're drawn to that rather than waiting for it to settle, and you're prepared to be one of the people whose choices set the pattern for everyone who follows.Work Experience RequirementsA minimum of 12 years of progressive infrastructure, automation, or DevOps engineering experience, including a minimum of 5 years in a people leadership role managing software engineering or automation-focused teams. The following specifics are required:Deep production experience building and operating modern cloud-native infrastructure — either as a primary builder in AWS (or a comparable cloud platform), or running containerized workloads on Docker and Kubernetes at scale. We expect real depth in one and working fluency in the other. Kubernetes is a significant ongoing initiative at Cboe, so a solid command of containerization and orchestration concepts is expected even where recent hands-on time has been spent primarily in cloud-native services.Direct, hands-on experience with agentic AI coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, or similar) applied to real infrastructure or operations problems — not just general AI familiarity.Experience designing or extending an agent framework or automation platform, including guardrails for safe autonomous action against production systems.Hands-on experience with configuration management and network automation at scale (Ansible or equivalent), including configuration compliance and drift detection, and automated upgrade workflows with pre- and post-change validation.Familiarity with global observability and monitoring platforms (e.g., Prometheus and Grafana) — enough to set direction, prioritize investment, and make sound architectural calls.Working knowledge of network telemetry protocols and methods — SNMP, gNMI, syslog, and API-based polling — used to monitor the health of network and infrastructure devices at scale.Working knowledge across network engineering, security engineering, and telemetry/observability — enough to credibly lead, hire for, and make technical decisions across all three domains.Strong scripting and automation background (Python, Ansible, Terraform, or similar) and modern CI/CD and GitOps practices.Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to translate technical concepts for both engineers and business stakeholders.Benefits and Perks of working for Cboe Global MarketsWe value the total wellbeing of our people – including health, financial, personal and social wellness. We believe standard benefits like health insurance and fair pay are a given at any organization. Still, you should know we offer:Fair and competitive salary and incentive compensation packages with an upside for overachievement Generous paid time off, including vacation, personal days, sick days and annual community service days Health, dental and vision benefits, including access to telemedicine and mental health services 2:1 401(k) match, up to 8% match immediately upon hire Discounted Employee Stock Purchase Plan Tax Savings Accounts for health, dependent and transportation Employee referral bonus program Volunteer opportunities to help you give back to your communities Some of our associates’ favorite benefits and perks include: Complimentary lunch, snacks and coffee in any Cboe office Paid Tuition assistance and education opportunities Generous charitable giving company match Paid parental leave and fertility benefits On-site gyms and discounts to other fitness centers Paid Time OffMore About Cboe Global MarketsWe’re reimagining the future of the workplace by focusing on what matters most, our people. Our journey is an inclusive one. We’re investing deeply in leadership programs and career development initiatives that ensure everyone has an equal chance to succeed. We work with purpose, solving problems with ingenuity, collaboration, and a lot of passion. We’re an engaged and excited team connecting markets across borders and embracing growth in all its forms to achieve incredible outcomes. Learn more about life at Cboe on our website and LinkedIn.Equal Employment OpportunityWe're proud to be an equal opportunity employer who does not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment based on any legally protected characteristic, including race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, or veteran status. We are committed to fostering a workplace where all individuals are valued and respected. #LI-JHThis position is not eligible for visa sponsorship. Candidates must be legally authorized to work in the United States without the need for employer sponsorship now or in the future.Salary Ranges (applicable for US locations only)At Cboe, we are committed to providing a competitive, transparent, and market‑informed total rewards program. The anticipated base salary range for this role is $195,500-$278,300, with actual compensation determined by job‑related factors such as skills, relevant experience, education, internal alignment, and location.This role may also be eligible for annual incentive compensation and, where applicable, participation in Cboe's long-term equity programs. Additional information about Cboe's total rewards program, including benefits and other compensation components, can be found here: Total Rewards at CBOE.​Any communication from Cboe regarding this position will only come from a Cboe recruiter who has a @cboe.com email or via LinkedIn Recruiter. Cboe does not use any other third party communication tools for recruiting purposes. SummaryLocation: Chicago, IL; Kansas City, MOType: Full time