Senior AAP Engineer (RHV Migration & RHEL Platform Modernisation)

Location Wellington (NZ) Work Site Hybrid Employment Type 6+ Months (Initial Contract) Closing Date 28 Aug, 2026 Senior AAP Engineer (RHV Migration & RHEL Platform Modernisation) Ready to be the technical anchor for a multi-workstream RHV migration and RHEL modernisation programme in Wellington, NZ? Kestrel Eight is looking for a Senior AAP Engineer for an initial 6+ month engagement based in Wellington, NZ. This hybrid role - two days per week in the office, balance remote - spans legacy RHV migration support, high-touch application cutovers, and RHEL image and AAP modernisation, translating a defined programme of workstreams into practical, day-to-day execution that accelerates platform adoption, improves operational consistency and reduces technical debt. The Opportunity You will serve as the technical anchor building and operating Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) automation that drives legacy RHV migration, high-touch application cutovers, and RHEL image and deployment modernisation - plus ongoing Community of Practice and enablement work. This is a hands-on AAP engineering role for someone who can turn manual RHV/RHEL runbooks into repeatable, governed automation, while staying comfortable moving into direct execution and vendor-facing advisory work when needed. What You’ll Do AAP-Driven Migration Automation: Build and maintain Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) playbooks and workflows that drive RHV discovery, migration tooling execution and cutover tasks, replacing manual runbooks with repeatable automation. AAP Platform Governance: Configure and administer the Automation Platform itself - execution environments, credentials, RBAC and Automation Hub - to keep automation secure, auditable and scalable. Automated RHEL Image Factory: Design and build an automated golden-image pipeline using AAP/Ansible and Red Hat Image Builder, embedding security hardening (CIS/OpenSCAP) and patch lifecycle rings (Satellite/Insights) directly into the automation. Migration Discovery & Readiness: Audit the remaining RHV estate and assess hosts, guests and dependencies against migration prerequisites, flagging high-risk workloads before they enter the pipeline. Automated Decommissioning: Use Ansible to automate the retirement of RHV infrastructure as workloads migrate off, including data retention and storage reclamation. High-Touch Application Support: Partner directly with Application Owners on complex, tier-1 workloads - profiling risks, co-authoring tailored cutover runbooks, and providing live support during cutover windows. Red Hat Vendor Liaison: Act as the primary technical conduit to Red Hat Support, managing and escalating cases across the RHV and RHEL environment. Enablement & Capability Uplift: Run Community of Practice workshops and enablement activities, and track progress against the Programme of Work to build lasting in-house AAP capability. What You Bring Hands-on expertise building and administering Ansible / Ansible Automation Platform (AAP) - playbooks, execution environments, RBAC and Automation Hub - to drive infrastructure automation at scale. Deep working knowledge of Red Hat Virtualization (RHV) and RHEL platforms, with a strong track record delivering production migrations to VMware. Practical experience with migration tooling - vCenter Converter, virt-v2v, or equivalent - and the ability to tune it for throughput and minimal downtime. Experience automating RHEL image builds and patch lifecycle management via Ansible/Image Builder and Red Hat Satellite or Insights. Working knowledge of enterprise security hardening (firewalld, CIS benchmarks, OpenSCAP). Experience supporting complex, tier-1 clustered workloads (e.g. Oracle RAC, Pacemaker) through live cutover events. Confidence acting as a vendor liaison, managing and escalating support cases directly with Red Hat. Strong stakeholder communication skills, able to translate infrastructure detail into operational impact and support a Community of Practice. Contract Details Detail Value Rate Competitive daily rate Term 6+ Months (Initial Contract) Location Wellington, NZ, hybrid (2 days/week on site, balance remote) Start ASAP #J-18808-Ljbffr