ThoughtLabs Belgium · Île-de-France, France
Key Responsibilities
Operate and maintain Kubernetes and Gardener environments in production.
Monitor platform health and availability across clusters and control-plane services.
Troubleshoot issues affecting clusters, nodes, pods, operators, networking, storage, and platform components.
Act as L2/L3 support for incidents, including root cause analysis and remediation activities.
Plan and execute upgrades, patches, platform changes, and lifecycle management activities.
Manage capacity, performance, and scalability requirements.
Implement and maintain security controls, RBAC policies, secrets management, and platform hardening.
Contribute to automation initiatives and operational efficiency improvements.
Maintain technical documentation, operational procedures, and runbooks.
Participate in change management, problem management, and service improvement activities.
Collaborate closely with infrastructure, networking, storage, security, and platform engineering teams.
Technical Skills:
The ideal candidate should demonstrate strong expertise in the following areas:
Kubernetes & Platform Engineering
Kubernetes production operations
Kubernetes control plane management
Cluster lifecycle management
Workload orchestration
RBAC management
Troubleshooting and performance optimization
Gardener
Shoot and Seed cluster concepts
Cluster provisioning and lifecycle management
Upgrades and reconciliation mechanisms
Failure analysis and troubleshooting
Linux Administration
Linux systems administration
Garden Linux
System hardening
Patch management
Performance troubleshooting
Storage & Infrastructure
Ceph
Rook
CSI integrations
Persistent volume management
Storage troubleshooting
Cloud Technologies
Kubernetes
Gardener
OpenStack
Cloud-native infrastructure platforms
Monitoring & Observability
Prometheus
Grafana
OpenSearch
Log analysis and correlation
Monitoring and alerting strategies
Automation & DevOps
GitHub
Jenkins
Ansible
Terraform
CI/CD pipelines
GitOps practices
Infrastructure as Code
IT Service Management
ServiceNow
ITIL processes
Incident Management
Problem Management
Change Management
Security
Kubernetes security
RBAC
Secrets management
Platform hardening
Vulnerability management
Security best practices for cloud-native environments
Required Experience
Minimum 5 years of experience in cloud or platform operations.
At least 3 years of hands-on experience managing Kubernetes in production environments.
Experience supporting business-critical production platforms.
Strong incident troubleshooting and operational support background.
Experience working within ITIL-governed environments.
Familiarity with on-call support and operational responsibilities.
Experience in enterprise-scale cloud or managed services environments is highly desirable.
Certifications
Strongly Recommended
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
Linux Administration Certification or equivalent experience
ITIL Foundation
Preferred
Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
Terraform Associate
Red Hat Certifications
ServiceNow Fundamentals
Nice to Have
OpenStack certifications
Cloud security certifications
AWS certifications
Azure certifications
Soft Skills
Strong troubleshooting and analytical mindset.
Excellent communication skills.
Ability to work effectively during critical incidents.
Strong documentation and reporting capabilities.
Collaborative team player.
Customer-oriented and service-focused attitude.
Ability to prioritize effectively in fast-paced production environments.
Continuous improvement mindset.
Languages
English: Professional proficiency (mandatory)
French: Professional proficiency preferred
Desired Profile
We are looking for a senior platform engineer with extensive experience operating Kubernetes environments in production. The ideal candidate combines strong technical expertise, operational discipline, automation skills, and a proactive approach to reliability and continuous improvement.
The candidate should be comfortable working across infrastructure, cloud, storage, networking, monitoring, and security domains while contributing to platform stability, scalability, and operational excellence.
Interview Focus Areas
Candidates should be prepared to discuss:
Kubernetes architecture and operations
Gardener platform administration
Production incident management
Cluster troubleshooting and recovery scenarios
Platform lifecycle management
Monitoring and observability strategies
Automation and Infrastructure as Code
Security and RBAC implementation
ServiceNow and ITIL practices
Real-life examples of critical production incidents and their resolution
Location: France
Start Date: ASAP
Duration: Long-term engagement with operational responsibilities and participation in production support activities.