CSU Brussels (SB)_Kubernetes Platform Operations and Maintenance Expert

Duties

• Operate and maintain the Kubernetes clusters: Monitor cluster health and alerts daily; check nodes, pods, workloads, resource use, events, and degraded components. Meet the defined performance SLA and follow internal procedures.
• Manage cluster components and tooling: Carry out node lifecycle tasks such as joining, draining, cordoning, and replacing nodes. Maintain the CNI, CSI, ingress, metrics server, and CoreDNS, along with Prometheus and Grafana, the logging stack, Cilium, the on-premises registry, ArgoCD GitOps, cert-manager, Zabbix integration hooks, and backup tooling.
• Perform maintenance and security work: Apply patches and upgrades, assess upgrade readiness, rotate certificates, manage secrets and RBAC, audit access and network policies, and scan for and remediate vulnerabilities within the clusters.
• Support backup and application operations: Run cluster backup operations using Commvault, Velero, or K10, and assist application teams with deployment troubleshooting.
• Document and share knowledge: Keep cluster documentation and runbooks current and provide knowledge transfer.
• Produce monthly deliverables: Submit a cluster health report; security compliance report; capacity and performance report; patching and upgrade report; incident and root cause analysis report covering P1–P3 incidents; configuration drift report; change log; and risk register update.
• Coordinate with the team: Attend weekly status updates, activity planning, retrospectives, workshops, and other meetings as instructed by the Team Leader, in the office or by conference call.

Requirements

• Education and experience: A university degree and three years of relevant experience, or equivalent qualifications; plus at least three years of hands-on Kubernetes operations experience.
• Technical experience: Experience operating SUSE RKE2 Kubernetes distributions and working with monitoring, logging, repositories, ingress, CNI, and backup tooling.
• Security clearance: NATO Secret.
• Working arrangements: Full-time on-site in Brussels, Belgium. Most daily activities must be performed physically on-site.
• Desirable background: Experience in an international environment with both military and civilian personnel, and knowledge of NATO responsibilities and organization, including ACO and ACT.
• Scope boundaries: The role covers activities inside the Kubernetes clusters. Underlying VMs, storage, and network infrastructure are NCIA’s responsibility. NCIA also owns disaster recovery tests, while the contractor provides performance artifacts. Application development or debugging is outside the role.