Summary
Oivan is seeking a Senior Kubernetes Platform Engineer for an on-site role in the UAE. The engineer will build, operate and troubleshoot production Kubernetes platforms, including RKE2 clusters and GPU-enabled infrastructure for AI/ML workloads. Responsibilities include platform automation, GitOps and CI/CD delivery, service mesh operations, security hardening, monitoring, upgrades, backup and disaster recovery, and customer knowledge transfer. Applicants should have 5+ years of IT experience, including 3+ years administering Kubernetes in production, strong Rancher and Linux skills, and advanced English; Arabic is an advantage.
The posting
As published on oivan.com. Pulled from the employer's site and shown as they wrote it.
What We Need
Oivan is looking for an experienced Senior Kubernetes Platform Engineer to join our team in the UAE. You will build, operate and troubleshoot enterprise Kubernetes platforms including GPU-enabled clusters for AI/ML workloads. This role requires strong expertise in:
- Hands-on Kubernetes operations, with strong troubleshooting and root-cause investigation skills
- SUSE Rancher Manager setup, operations and multi-cluster management
- NVIDIA GPU Operator deployment and operations on top of RKE2
- Automation through CI/CD pipelines and GitOps-based delivery
- Istio service mesh
Hands-on experience with RKE2, Rancher and SUSE Virtualization is a very strong plus. Candidates without it must at least understand what these products are and their core concepts.
What You'll Do
Key Responsibilities
We offer you the unique opportunity to apply and develop your skills with a diverse and geographically distributed technology team. You will play a key role in building and running Kubernetes platforms that host mission-critical and GPU-accelerated workloads.
The following are the main duties you will do as part of this job:
- Install, configure and operate production Kubernetes clusters, primarily RKE2, across on-premise, air-gapped and hybrid environments
- Set up and operate SUSE Rancher Manager in high availability: installation, upgrades, backup and restore, authentication and RBAC, and provisioning or importing downstream clusters
- Automate infrastructure provisioning and configuration using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform and Ansible)
- Troubleshoot and investigate platform issues end to end (nodes, pods, CNI networking, DNS, ingress, storage, certificates, etcd and the control plane) and drive root-cause analysis to closure
- Set up and operate SUSE Rancher Manager in high availability: installation, upgrades, backup and restore, authentication and RBAC, and provisioning or importing downstream clusters
- Deploy and operate the NVIDIA GPU Operator on RKE2, including driver and container toolkit configuration for RKE2's embedded containerd, the device plugin, GPU Feature Discovery and DCGM monitoring
- Configure GPU sharing (MIG and time-slicing) and support the scheduling and operation of AI/ML workloads on GPU nodes
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitLab CI, Jenkins, GitHub Actions) for application and platform delivery
- Implement GitOps with Rancher Fleet, Argo CD or Flux, keeping Git as the single source of truth for cluster configuration and deployments
- Package and manage workloads with Helm and Kustomize
- Deploy and operate Istio: traffic management, ingress and egress gateways, mTLS and authorization policies, and mesh troubleshooting
- Operate SUSE Virtualization (Harvester) to run VM workloads alongside containers and to host RKE2 guest clusters
- Implement monitoring, logging and alerting with Prometheus, Grafana and Rancher Monitoring and Logging
- Harden clusters using CIS benchmarks (including the RKE2 CIS profile), Pod Security Admission, network policies and secrets management
- Plan and execute Kubernetes, RKE2 and Rancher upgrades with minimal downtime
- Design and test backup and disaster recovery, including etcd snapshots, Rancher backups and workload backup (e.g., Velero)
- Create and maintain runbooks, playbooks and platform documentation
- Conduct knowledge transfer and training sessions for customer and internal teams
- Work closely with customer stakeholders in on-site engagements
What You Have
Qualifications & Skills
Our ideal candidate will fulfill the following requirements:
- 5+ years of hands-on experience in IT, with 3+ years administering Kubernetes in production
- Strong Kubernetes troubleshooting and investigation skills:
- Systematic debugging with kubectl, events, logs, crictl and node-level tools
- Diagnosing networking, DNS, storage, scheduling, certificate and control-plane issues
- Root-cause analysis and clear incident write-ups
- Hands-on experience with Rancher Manager setup and day-2 operations
- Experience deploying and operating the NVIDIA GPU Operator, ideally on RKE2
- Automation with CI/CD and GitOps:
- GitLab CI, Jenkins or GitHub Actions
- Fleet, Argo CD or Flux
- Helm and Kustomize
- Hands-on experience with Istio service mesh
- Infrastructure as Code: Terraform and Ansible
- Strong Linux administration (SLES / SLE Micro, RHEL or Ubuntu) and networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS, load balancing, TLS)
- Monitoring and observability: Prometheus, Grafana and centralized logging
- Strong Bash scripting; Python or Go is a plus
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
- Strong experience working in on-premise enterprise environments, including air-gapped setups
- Ability to work independently in customer-facing roles
- English (advanced); Arabic language skills are a strong advantage
Very strong plus: RKE2, Rancher and SUSE Virtualization
Hands-on production experience with these products will strongly differentiate a candidate. Candidates without it must, at a minimum, be able to explain:
- RKE2: SUSE's security-focused, CNCF-certified Kubernetes distribution; server and agent nodes, embedded containerd, etcd, configuration through config.yaml, CIS-hardened defaults and air-gapped installation
- Rancher: multi-cluster management; the Rancher Manager (local) cluster versus downstream clusters, cluster agents, projects and RBAC, Fleet and the app catalog
- SUSE Virtualization (Harvester): hyperconverged infrastructure built on Kubernetes, using KubeVirt for virtual machines and Longhorn for storage, managed from Rancher
Desirable
- SUSE Security (NeuVector) and SUSE Storage (Longhorn)
- CNI expertise: Canal, Calico or Cilium
- Secrets management: HashiCorp Vault, Sealed Secrets or External Secrets Operator
- Private registries and air-gapped image management (e.g., Harbor)
- AI/ML platform tooling (e.g., Kubeflow, KServe, Ray)
- Other Kubernetes platforms: Red Hat OpenShift, EKS, AKS or GKE
Preferred Certifications
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
- Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
- Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
- SUSE Rancher certification (Administrator or Deployment Specialist)
- Istio Certified Associate (ICA)
- NVIDIA-Certified Associate: AI Infrastructure and Operations
Role: Kubernetes Platform Engineer
Experience: 5+ years (3+ years hands-on Kubernetes)
Location: Onsite / UAE