Cloud Operations Engineer — Linux & Kubernetes

Job description

# Cloud Operations Engineer — Linux & Kubernetes **Location: United Kingdom — 100% Remote. Preference will be given to candidates based in London or the surrounding area.** **Employment Type:** Full-time **Team:** DevOps / Site Reliability Engineering **Role Type:** Individual Contributor **Experience:** Minimum 5 years of relevant hands-on experience; typically 5–7+ years ## About RapidFort RapidFort helps organisations secure their software supply chains, reduce software vulnerabilities, and minimise the attack surface of containerised applications. We are looking for an experienced Cloud Operations Engineer with strong Linux, Kubernetes, and Bash skills to support the production and delivery environments behind our SaaS platform. ## The Role This is a hands-on individual contributor position for an engineer who can independently investigate production issues, manage deployments, respond to incidents, and take ownership of operational requests. You will support the day-to-day operation of our platform while improving automation, monitoring, documentation, and operational processes. You should be comfortable troubleshooting beyond documented runbooks, gathering diagnostic evidence, and exercising sound judgment about remediation and escalation. You will work closely with our DevOps, SRE, and Development teams within a follow-the-sun operational model, initially covering India and Europe. This position supports scheduled European coverage and participates in an on-call rotation. ## Key Responsibilities - Monitor production and SaaS environments, respond to alerts, and proactively investigate potential issues. - Troubleshoot Linux, Kubernetes, application, and cloud infrastructure problems using logs, metrics, events, and diagnostic tools. - Investigate failed or restarting workloads, deployment failures, resource constraints, configuration problems, and service connectivity issues. - Execute application and platform deployments using established processes and tooling. - Trigger, monitor, and troubleshoot software builds and CI/CD release workflows. - Perform approved remediation and rollback procedures, validating service health after changes. - Own operational requests through resolution or a clear, accepted handoff to the appropriate team. - Coordinate incident response when required, engage relevant engineers, and communicate service impact and investigation progress. - Escalate complex issues with clear findings, supporting evidence, and details of actions already taken. - Write and maintain Bash scripts to automate recurring operational tasks. - Create, maintain, and improve runbooks, troubleshooting guides, and operational documentation. - Participate in incident reviews and help address recurring problems. - Identify improvements to monitoring, alerting, deployment reliability, and operational efficiency. - Provide clear handoffs between regional shifts and participate in scheduled coverage and on-call responsibilities. ## Essential Experience & Skills - **At least 5 years of relevant hands-on experience**, typically 5–7+ years, in cloud operations, platform operations, infrastructure engineering, DevOps, SRE, or a comparable technical role. - Proven experience supporting live production environments and independently investigating operational issues. - **Strong Linux administration and troubleshooting skills**, including processes, services, permissions, filesystems, resource utilisation, and network connectivity. - **Hands-on experience operating and troubleshooting Kubernetes workloads in production.** - **Practical Bash scripting experience**, including writing, reading, and troubleshooting scripts for operational tasks. - Experience using Git and working with CI/CD pipelines, deployments, and release workflows. - Hands-on experience with at least one major public cloud platform: AWS, Azure, or GCP. - Experience using monitoring, logging, and alerting platforms such as Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, or equivalent tools. - Working knowledge of DNS, TCP/IP, HTTP/HTTPS, ports, and connectivity troubleshooting. - Experience responding to production incidents and following controlled change procedures. ### Kubernetes Troubleshooting You must be comfortable using Kubernetes tooling to investigate problems and explain your findings. This includes: - Using `kubectl get`, `kubectl describe`, and `kubectl logs` to inspect workloads and diagnose issues. - Reviewing current and previous container logs, Kubernetes events, and workload configuration. - Troubleshooting CrashLoopBackOff, image pull failures, scheduling problems, and failing health probes. - Investigating resource requests and limits, application configuration, and service connectivity. - Selecting appropriate remediation steps and validating recovery. We are looking for practical understanding: the ability to explain what you are checking, interpret the evidence, and decide what to do next. ## Desirable Experience - Helm and Kubernetes application configuration. - Terraform and infrastructure-as-code workflows. - Python or another scripting language. - Cloud IAM, networking, load balancing, and storage. - Container registries and container image troubleshooting. - Operational support for databases and other stateful services. - Follow-the-sun operations and regional incident handoffs. - Enterprise SaaS or cybersecurity environments. Experience with one major cloud platform is sufficient. Strong Linux, Kubernetes, and Bash skills are essential; experience with every additional technology listed is not required. ## How You Work - Take ownership of issues and follow through to resolution. - Investigate systematically and use evidence to guide decisions. - Understand the impact of production changes and recognise when to act, seek input, or escalate. - Communicate clearly during incidents, technical investigations, and regional handoffs. - Work independently during assigned coverage while collaborating with a globally distributed team. - Look for opportunities to automate repetitive tasks and prevent recurring problems. This is an individual contributor role with no direct people management responsibilities. A specific degree or professional certification is not required. ## What Success Looks Like Within your first few months, you will be able to: - Independently handle routine deployments, builds, and operational requests. - Diagnose and resolve common Linux and Kubernetes production issues. - Respond to alerts with a structured investigation and appropriate remediation. - Provide clear diagnostic findings when escalating complex incidents. - Reliably support European operational coverage and regional handoffs. - Improve runbooks, automate repetitive tasks, and help reduce recurring incidents. ## Career Development As your understanding of RapidFort’s platform grows, you will have opportunities to expand your technical ownership across cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes, CI/CD, automation, observability, and reliability engineering. Progression can remain on an individual contributor path, with increasing technical scope and responsibility. ## Location & Working Arrangements **Location:** You must be based in the United Kingdom. This position is fully remote. **Work Authorisation:** You must already have the right to work in the United Kingdom. RapidFort cannot provide visa sponsorship for this position. **Schedule:** The role includes scheduled European operational coverage and an on-call rotation. Occasional work outside normal hours may be required for incidents or planned operational activities. Coverage hours, on-call frequency, and applicable compensation or time-off arrangements will be discussed during the interview process. ## Interview Process The interview process includes a practical technical assessment covering Linux troubleshooting, Kubernetes operations, Bash scripting, and production incident scenarios. Candidates will be expected to demonstrate a structured investigation, explain their choice of commands, interpret diagnostic output, and identify appropriate remediation or escalation steps.