Platform Engineer Linux & Kubernetes

As a Platform Engineer, you will be part of an ambitious and technically strong team that is responsible for developing and maintaining the existing Internal Cloud Services (on-premise IaaS and PaaS), and has the ambition to shape an Internal Developer Platform (IDP) on top of this. You will play a key role in automating development environments, improving developer experience and optimizing our cloud-native infrastructure. Click here for a short impression

We're looking for someone with a passion for scalable systems, a developer productivity center, and experience building reliable platform solutions based on Kubernetes and the broader cloud-native landscape.

Our platforms are used intensively within WUR. What we devise and maintain is used, for example, by our Research customers to conduct groundbreaking research, so that you can also make an important contribution to our mission: "to explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life".

Your duties and responsibilities include:

• Designing, developing, and maintaining our PaaS (Kubernetes) and our Internal Developer Platform;
• Design and management of the Kubernetes cluster and its CI/CD pipelines;
• Design and management of our Linux IaaS offerings (RedHat/Ubuntu) and the associated tooling;
• Automate platform operations;
• Monitoring and improving platform performance, security en reliability;
• Collaborate with developers to improve their workflows and offer them as self-service (XaaS) capabilities;
• You build it, you own it: you solve disruptions and performance issues together with the team itself;
• Inquiring about technical strategies, tooling choices and long-term solutions, and transforming this into manageable next steps.

Your team
You will be part of a team of eleven professionals who manage the entire on-premises internal cloud services for WUR. This includes IaaS (Windows, Linux, VMware), PaaS (Kubernetes), and nearly a thousand Windows and Linux servers, including the Kubernetes hosts. Together as a team, we ensure a stable development platform that enables our colleagues in education and research to deliver the highest quality to our students and clients.

Our IT teams work according to agile principles. Collaboration, communication, transparency and continuous feedback are essential. The team works on campus at least two days a week and can choose to work from home the other days, for good focus and a healthy work-life balance.

You are an independent and curious IT professional with a strong DevOps mindset. You thrive in agile environments and enjoy collaborating with other professionals and stakeholders. A true team player, you’re not afraid to speak up, ask questions, and challenge the status quo when needed.

You’re driven, communicative, and passionate about education and research. With a sharp analytical mind and a customer- and solution-oriented approach, you take initiative and act as a driving force to get things done. Your organizational skills help you deliver results efficiently and effectively.

You’re always on the lookout for ways to improve existing systems and enable new functionalities. At the same time, you ensure the infrastructure you support is available, stable, scalable, and user-friendly.
Once fully onboarded, you will join your colleagues in a 24/7 on-call rotation for security incidents, roughly once every six weeks, according to a shared schedule.

You also possess:

• Bachelor level working and thinking ability; preferably a completed degree in ICT;
• Experience as a Platform Engineer, Site Reliability Engineer (SRE), or DevOps Engineer in an enterprise environment;
• Knowledge of and hands-on experience with Kubernetes. You either hold a CKA/CKAD certification or are willing to obtain one;
• Knowledge of and experience with Linux. You either hold a RHCSA certification or are willing to obtain one;
• Knowledge of designing and managing Internal Developer Platforms or cloud-native architectures;
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or Ansible, and a declarative approach to system configuration;
• Experience with containerization and CI/CD tools (e.g., ArgoCD, Git or GitLab);
• Basic knowledge of programming and scripting languages such as Python or Bash;
• Proficiency in both Dutch and English. While team discussions are mostly in Dutch, more and more communication takes place in English due to our international working environment.

Wageningen University & Research offers excellent terms of employment. A few highlights from our Collective Labour Agreement include:

• working hours that can be discussed and arranged so that they allow for the best possible work-life balance;
• sabbatical leave, study leave, and partially paid parental leave;
• there is a strong focus on vitality and you can make use of the sports facilities available on campus for a small fee;
• a fixed year-end bonus of 8,3%;
• excellent pension scheme.

In addition to these first-rate employee benefits, you will of course receive a good salary. We offer, depending on your experience, a competitive gross salary of between € 3.316 and € 6.008 for a full-time working week of 36 hours, in accordance with the CLA Wageningen Research (scale 9/10/11). A contract for 32 hours can be discussed. As for your contract, we initially offer a one-year contract with the intention to converting it into a premanent contract.

Wageningen University & Research offers plenty of opportunities for growth and development, with a strong internal recruitment policy and excellent training programmes.

You will work on the greenest and most innovative campus in the Netherlands, in an international and open working environment. For 20 consecutive years, we have been voted the "best university" in the Netherlands! A place to be proud of.

Coming from abroad
Wageningen University & Research is the university and research centre for life sciences. The themes we deal with are relevant to everyone around the world and Wageningen, therefore, has a large international community and a lot to offer to international employees.

Because we expect you to work and live in the Netherlands our team of advisors on Dutch immigration procedures will help you with the visa application procedures for yourself and, if applicable, for your family. If you come with a partner, we offer a Dual Career group program organized by our Welcome Center. This program helps your partner to get familiar with the Dutch culture, labour market and assists your partner to find a job.

Feeling welcome also has everything to do with being well informed. Wageningen University & Research's International Community page contains practical information about what we can do to support international employees coming to Wageningen. Furthermore, our Welcome Center can assist you with any additional advice and information about for example housing, opening a bank account or schooling. Finally, certain categories of international staff may be eligible for a tax exemption on a part of their salary during the first five years in the Netherlands.

Wageningen University & Research
The mission of Wageningen University & Research is “To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life”. Under the banner Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen University and the specialised research institutes of the Wageningen Research Foundation have joined forces in contributing to finding solutions to important questions in the domain of healthy food and living environment.

With its roughly 30 branches, 7,700 employees (7,000 fte), 2,500 PhD and EngD candidates, 13,100 students and over 150,000 participants to WUR’s Life Long Learning, Wageningen University & Research is one of the leading organisations in its domain. The unique Wageningen approach lies in its integrated approach to issues and the collaboration between different disciplines.

Read the 5 reasons why your future colleagues enjoy working at WUR.

We will recruit for the vacancy ourselves and do not appreciate unasked for services from recruitment agencies. However, sharing in your network is appreciated.