Join the team building Europe’s data cloud
Are you looking for a place where your work truly matters? At CloudFerro, we build and operate cloud computing platforms that support Europe’s space industry, scientists and climate researchers. Thanks to our infrastructure, it is possible to store and analyse petabytes of Earth observation data.
It has extensive experience in storing and processing large data sets, including multi-petabyte Earth observation satellite data repositories. CloudFerro solutions are used by leading companies and scientific institutions in Europe from various market sectors that process large data sets: European Space Agency (ESA), EUMETSAT, European Center for Medium-Range Forecasts (ECMWF), Mercator Ocean International, German Aerospace Agency (DLR), EGI and many others.
CloudFerro is:
- a team of experts who are keen to share their knowledge,
- international projects and modern technologies, with a collaborative and open atmosphere,
- a real impact on the development of Europe’s digital infrastructure.
Due to our dynamic development, we are seeking talented individuals to join our team as a:
Lead Platform Engineer
About the role
As a Lead Platform DevOps Engineer, you will own the operational backbone of the PaaS platform. You will be responsible for cluster lifecycle management, GitOps pipelines, CI/CD, release management, Infrastructure as Code and overall platform reliability.
This role connects software engineering with operations. Your work ensures that what the team builds is deployable, testable, observable and maintainable at scale. Your operational decisions will directly influence platform stability and engineering delivery speed.
Responsibilities
- Manage the full Kubernetes cluster lifecycle: provisioning, upgrades, scaling and decommissioning (Cluster API + custom controllers).
- Operate and maintain etcd, including backup/restore, monitoring and disaster recovery.
- Design, standardize and maintain the platform-wide GitOps architecture.
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines, including integration testing on ephemeral environments and release management workflows.
- Manage node pools and autoscaling mechanisms.
- Define deployment and rollback standards across all platform services.
- Participate in on-call rotations and support critical platform incidents.
Requirements
- Strong experience as a DevOps, SRE or Platform Engineer operating Kubernetes infrastructure in production environments.
- Deep understanding of GitOps tools such as ArgoCD or Flux, including designing pipelines for multi-product platforms.
- Hands-on experience with Cluster API and multi-cluster management.
- Experience building CI/CD pipelines, integration testing environments and release processes.
- Proficiency in Go and good knowledge of Python.
- Comfortable using AI-assisted development tools such as Claude Code or GitHub Copilot as part of daily engineering work.
Nice to have
- Experience with etcd operations, disaster recovery and monitoring.
- Knowledge of Kubernetes upgrade strategies, certificate rotation and rolling upgrades.
- Experience with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform or Ansible.
- Experience deploying and operating Harbor with S3-backed storage.
- Familiarity with Kamaji, k3s or vCluster.
- Experience with multi-cluster management solutions such as Rancher or Gardener.
- CKA or CKS certification.
- Experience with bare-metal Kubernetes environments.
- Experience with chaos engineering and disaster recovery testing.
Why join us?
- Build a cloud platform from scratch that supports the European space sector, climate research and scientific initiatives with real-world impact.
- Join a highly autonomous team operating with startup-level ownership inside a stable and established organization.
- Work with CNCF technologies in production environments: Kubernetes, KNative, Cilium, ArgoCD, Kubeflow and more.
- Have a real voice in architectural and product decisions.
- Work in an AI-native engineering environment where tools like Claude Code are part of everyday workflows.
- Enjoy a high level of autonomy, flexible work organization and stable employment conditions.
- Receive an attractive benefits package including private healthcare, Multisport and life insurance.
- Access language classes and continuous learning opportunities.
Want to know more?
Feel free to contact our recruitment team:
Meet your team
DevOps
Our task is to ensure the smooth and reliable deployment of applications and infrastructure. The main purpose of the DevOps team's existence is to integrate application development activities and operations, enabling an automated and efficient deployment environment, mainly on Kubernetes clusters.