DevOps Engineer

Position Title: DevOps Developer

Location: Brussels, Belgium

Duration: 6 months with possible extension

Languages: English

Work mode: Hybrid

Job Description:

Client is seeking a DevOps Engineer with expertise in Data Platform Engineering, focusing on the Kafka ecosystem and Kubernetes/OpenShift. This position is based in Belgium, within the Observability and Analytics Cluster under the Tooling Services organization. The candidate will play a pivotal role in scaling and enhancing the Observability Platform, which integrates Kafka ecosystem components and containerized infrastructure.

The role involves collaborating with global teams, driving operational excellence, and improving the resiliency, reliability, stability, and security of the platform. The successful candidate will demonstrate a strong background in stream processing and container orchestration.

Key Responsibilities:

• Mentor and guide less senior engineers by sharing knowledge and promoting best practices to support team success.
• Manage and enhance Kafka ecosystem components, including KStream, KConnect, and KSQLDB, ensuring robust stream processing in production environments.
• Implement and optimize data pipelines to handle large-scale telemetry and observability data ingestion using Kafka and the ELK stack.
• Oversee deployments in Kubernetes and OpenShift, ensuring scalability, high availability, and performance for Kafka and other platform workloads.
• Apply DevOps and SRE principles to improve platform reliability, focusing on automation, self-service capabilities, and infrastructure optimization.
• Automate deployment and infrastructure management through tools like Ansible for IaC and CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins and ArgoCD.
• Troubleshoot complex issues in distributed systems, particularly in environments involving Kafka, Kubernetes, and large-scale data platforms.

Required Skills and Experience:

• Extensive experience with the Kafka ecosystem, including Kafka Streams, KSQLDB, and Kafka Connect.
• Strong expertise in managing and deploying workloads on Kubernetes and OpenShift, including experience with Docker or Podman containerization.
• Proven ability to operate and maintain platforms built on the ELK stack (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana).
• Hands-on experience with DevOps tools: Jenkins, ArgoCD, Git, and Ansible for infrastructure automation.
• Proficiency in either Java or Python for platform development and automation tasks.
• Experience managing on-premises infrastructure (compute, storage, and networking).
• Ability to design, build, and optimize ETL pipelines and data processing workflows for telemetry and log data.
• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills, particularly in distributed, high-availability systems.
• Familiarity with Agile methodologies and the ability to collaborate effectively with remote and cross-functional teams.

Nice to Have:

• Knowledge of the Open Telemetry standard for metrics, traces, and logs.
• Understanding of architecture models such as UML or C4 model.
• Foundational knowledge of Machine Learning (ML) concepts.
• Certification or hands-on experience as an ELK data engineer.

Skills:

• Ansible & IaC
• CI/CD
• ELK Stack
• Independent/Autonomous
• Java Development
• Kafka ecosystem
• Observability & Monitoring
• OpenShift/Kubernetes