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Keith Churchill

Automation & Observability Architect for modern networks

I build data-driven network platforms, lead engineering teams, and turn operational complexity into automation, insight, and resilient service delivery.

whoami

Builder | Leader | Innovator

I work at the point where networks, data, and automation meet. My best work happens when a business needs clearer operational insight, faster delivery, and engineering teams that can move from idea to production with confidence.

I have led network, infrastructure, automation, lab, and operational excellence teams across challenger telecoms and technology businesses. The common thread is practical transformation: make the system observable, automate the repeatable work, and give people the context to make better decisions.

proof-points

99.5% -> 99.95% Network availability improvement through data-led service assurance
Hours -> Minutes Product validation accelerated through an automation framework
300+ High-footfall sites onboarded during a national dark fibre rollout
30 Gbps Peak content delivery across major global platforms

career-history

CityFibre - Architect: Automation & Observability

September 2024 - Present

Defines architectural principles and strategy for Network Observability, Automation, and AIOps, reporting directly to the CTO.

  • Strategic contributor to the Network Management System programme across performance monitoring, capacity planning, and alert management.
  • Led consolidation of legacy monitoring tools into a unified tactical NMS platform.
  • Developed a Service Assurance model across multi-vendor access and core networks, extracting key data points for long-term diagnostics and deeper network observability.
  • Invited ConnectedNorth 2025 speaker on observability and data intelligence in modern network operations.

CityFibre - Engineering Manager: Operational Excellence

August 2021 - September 2024

Led Lab and Automation teams responsible for product validation, network equipment automation, and broader operational improvement.

  • Built two engineering teams from the ground up, hiring for technical depth and collaborative delivery.
  • Commissioned and deployed an automation framework that reduced product test cycles from hours to minutes.
  • Delivered the Universal CPE Private Cloud Platform as a strategic product enabler.
  • Developed Monthly Network Availability methodology for Board-level service reporting.

CityFibre - Senior Network Engineer

November 2019 - August 2021

Designed and evolved CityFibre's Core MPLS network with a focus on automation, mentoring, and data-driven service improvement.

  • Led vendor engagement and implementation of Path Computation Engine capability.
  • Trained and deployed machine learning models to detect GPON segments with poor optical signal levels.
  • Automated BAU network tasks including Metro Fibre and ENNI provisioning using Ansible.

Hybrid Access Technologies - Head of Infrastructure

November 2015 - October 2019

Led infrastructure projects, network architecture, platform delivery, and operational stability for a software-defined broadband bonding business.

  • Designed a resilient data centre network with dark fibre connectivity between dual sites.
  • Implemented multi-homed BGP, multicloud VPN connectivity, and OpenStack-based VNF delivery.
  • Migrated company websites from monoliths to Kubernetes-orchestrated microservices on Google Cloud Platform.

Optinet - Head of Software Services and IT Infrastructure

December 2014 - August 2015

Focused on infrastructure strategy, vendor management, and operational resilience during organisational transformation.

  • Renegotiated vendor SLAs during merger activity, improving service commitments and commercial terms.
  • Led infrastructure asset separation during divestment with finance and operational stakeholders.

Optinet - Manager: Network Management Services

March 2006 - November 2014

Led a geographically distributed team of 12 network engineers across South Africa, covering operations, monitoring, change, incident management, and planning.

  • Led the design and rollout of South Africa's first successful uncapped broadband ADSL network.
  • Delivered a national dark fibre rollout supporting 300+ high-footfall WiFi sites in the first year.
  • Built scalable backbone and data centre infrastructure hosting platforms including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Akamai, and CDNetworks.

skills

Network Architecture

  • MPLS
  • BGP
  • SDN/NFV
  • NETCONF/YANG

Automation

  • Ansible
  • N8N
  • Event-driven
  • Intent-based
  • CI/CD

Observability

  • OpenTelemetry
  • Splunk
  • gNMI
  • NMS

Service Assurance

  • Alert management
  • Capacity planning
  • Availability reporting
  • Operational insight

AI/ML

  • AIOps
  • Generative AI
  • Agentic AI
  • ML / NLP

Data

  • Data Ops
  • Snowflake
  • Kafka
  • Data visualisation

Cloud & Platform

  • Kubernetes
  • OpenStack
  • Google Cloud
  • AWS VPC

Leadership

  • Team building
  • Budgeting
  • Stakeholder management
  • Operational excellence

personality

I am originally from South Africa and moved to the United Kingdom in 2015. Away from work, I report to the CHO - Chief Home Operator - and try to stay on top of the household backlog with varying levels of release confidence.

I enjoy exercise, cooking, and a good bottle of red wine. I make a strong pulled pork with roast potatoes, avoid oysters, and have a habit of using small automation experiments to keep learning at the edge of what AI and data tools can do.

current-thinking

Latest thoughts on Agentic Engineering

Agentic Engineering changes the economics of engineering bandwidth. Building is faster now: scripts, integrations, dashboards, tests, runbooks, and prototypes can move from idea to working draft in hours rather than weeks. That shifts the bottleneck away from writing code and toward knowing whether the output is correct.

In network engineering, that matters deeply. A generated config, automation workflow, or diagnostic model is only useful if it is safe against real topology, real vendor behaviour, real failure modes, and real operational constraints. The engineering craft moves toward sharper intent, stronger review, better test environments, and evidence-led validation.

The challenges are real. Company and customer information must stay protected, especially when engineers can accidentally paste sensitive network data, configs, or incident context into public models. We also need to help engineers feel safe as AI changes the shape of coding work. Their core value is not typing code; it is understanding the wider impact, risk, and interdependencies of systems and networks.

This is moving faster than anything we have seen before, and the field is nowhere near a steady state. I am keen to keep developing this space as a practical way to improve engineering efficiency, strengthen verification, and help teams build with more confidence.

references