Senior DevOps Engineer – PostgreSQL & Kafka on Kubernetes

We are looking for a Senior Data Platform Engineer to run the PostgreSQL and Apache Kafka platform behind k0rdent-ai — our multi-tenant control plane for enterprise GPU infrastructure. Every cluster provisioned, every GPU-hour consumed, and every tenant action is recorded on this platform, so it must be reliable, secure, and recoverable.
This is a hands-on DevOps / SRE role for stateful systems. You will deploy and operate PostgreSQL (CloudNativePG) and Kafka (Strimzi) on Kubernetes using operators, Helm, and GitOps — across cloud and bare-metal clusters, in a global control plane and multiple regions. You will own automation, upgrades, observability, backups, and disaster recovery, and give product teams self-service access to databases and topics through code.
Main Responsibilities

• Run PostgreSQL and Kafka on Kubernetes: Deploy, upgrade, scale, and operate CloudNativePG and Strimzi clusters with Helm charts and operator custom resources, across cloud and bare-metal Kubernetes.
• GitOps & Infrastructure as Code: Manage everything declaratively with Argo CD (or Flux), Helm, and Terraform; build CI/CD pipelines for database and Kafka changes, schema migrations, and operator upgrades.
• High Availability & Disaster Recovery: Design and operate high availability within each region and cross-region disaster recovery — PostgreSQL replica clusters, backups and point-in-time recovery, Kafka MirrorMaker 2 — with defined RPO/RTO targets and regular failover drills.
• Self-Service Platform: Give product teams self-service provisioning of databases, users, topics, and ACLs through code, with secure defaults and guardrails.
• Observability & Operations: Build monitoring and alerting (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry) for replication lag, backups, consumer lag, and capacity; participate in on-call and lead incident reviews.
• Security & Multi-Tenancy: Implement TLS/mTLS, secrets management (Vault/OpenBao), network policies, Kafka ACLs, and per-tenant isolation; integrate database and Kafka access with our identity platform (Keycloak / OIDC).
• Data Movement & CDC: Operate the outbox and change-data-capture pipelines (Debezium, Kafka Connect) that keep databases and event streams consistent between the global control plane and regions.
• Automation & Tooling: Write automation and small services in Go or Python to remove manual work, and partner with application teams on schema standards and performance troubleshooting.

Must Have

• Experience: 8+ years in DevOps, SRE, platform, or infrastructure engineering, including 3+ years running stateful systems (databases or message streaming) in production.
• Kubernetes: Strong hands-on Kubernetes operations — StatefulSets, persistent volumes and storage classes, pod disruption budgets, scheduling and affinity, network policies, and cluster upgrades — on cloud and/or bare-metal clusters.
• Operators & Helm: Production experience running PostgreSQL and/or Kafka through Kubernetes operators (CloudNativePG, Zalando, or Crunchy PGO; Strimzi, Confluent for Kubernetes, or similar), and authoring and maintaining Helm charts. Depth with one operator matters more than the specific product.
• GitOps & IaC: Day-to-day use of Argo CD or Flux, Terraform, and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or similar) in a declarative, review-driven workflow.
• PostgreSQL Operations: Practical PostgreSQL administration — replication and failover, backup and point-in-time recovery, connection pooling (PgBouncer), version upgrades, and performance troubleshooting.
• Kafka Operations: Running Kafka in production — brokers, topics and partitions, replication, consumer groups, monitoring, and capacity planning.
• Reliability & DR: Designing and testing high availability and disaster recovery for stateful systems, with defined RPO/RTO.
• Automation: Strong scripting and programming in Go (preferred) or Python, plus Bash.

Nice to Have

• Cross-region replication (CloudNativePG replica clusters, Kafka MirrorMaker 2) and global/regional multi-site architectures.
• Debezium, Kafka Connect, and transactional outbox / CDC patterns.
• Identity integration for data platforms (Keycloak, OIDC, LDAP/Active Directory).
• Observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, VictoriaMetrics).
• Secrets and security tooling (Vault/OpenBao, cert-manager, mTLS).
• Bare-metal infrastructure, Ceph or object storage, or GPU/AI infrastructure.
• Contributions to CloudNativePG, Strimzi, or related open-source projects.
• Experience in SOC 2 or ISO 27001 environments.

Education and Experience
Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.