Senior Openstack Engineer at Ilkari in Varaždin County, Croatia

Who we are

Ilkari is a privately-held start-up based in Dublin, Ireland. We deliver hyper-private scale innovation and technology to safeguard and secure data, enabling true data sovereignty even as the pace of change accelerates. Our best-in-breed sovereign technology delivers privacy and control over where companies’ data resides, where it flows, and how it’s accessed.

We’re here to rewrite the story of data sovereignty – empowering innovators, pioneers and visionaries to make their mark. We believe the sky is not the limit. We strive for the perfect balance of simplicity and excellence in everything we do, and we’re looking for people who are ready to join our journey and rewrite the story of data sovereignty.

Role overview

The Senior OpenStack Engineer is a hands-on role responsible for designing, building, operating and continuously improving a secure, resilient and scalable public cloud platform based on Canonical Charmed OpenStack using Juju.

Working within the cross-functional OpenStack Delivery Squad, the role collaborates with Architecture, Security, Network Engineering, Infrastructure, Service Delivery and Product to translate service and customer requirements into agreed designs and production-ready capabilities. The role covers the OpenStack service layer across compute, storage, networking, identity, control-plane services and customer-facing capabilities, including load balancing, instance availability and federated IAM.

The engineer applies an automation-led approach to platform deployment, configuration, testing, observability and lifecycle management. They contribute to technical design and peer review while remaining accountable for implementation quality, platform reliability, capacity, operational readiness, documentation and ongoing support.

Hybrid work model: 3 days in the office and 2 days remote. The role includes on-call and incident involvement as required, and an out-of-hours support rota during critical releases.

What you'll do

• Design, build, configure and operate a production OpenStack platform based on Canonical Charmed OpenStack, using Juju charms, bundles, models, relations and configuration to deliver repeatable and supportable cloud services.
• Engineer compute capacity, scheduling, images, flavours, quotas and workload placement to ensure predictable workload performance and effective use of available capacity.
• Design, integrate and operate Cinder, Ceph and Swift-based storage services, addressing capacity, performance, replication, failure recovery and data protection.
• Collaborate with Architecture and Network Engineering to define OpenStack connectivity requirements and integrate the platform with the network underlay and fabric, validating resilience, external connectivity and end-to-end service operation.
• Implement and operate a secure federated IAM solution supporting customer access, role-based permissions, single sign-on and enterprise identity integration.
• Administer and troubleshoot Ubuntu/Linux hosts and OpenStack control-plane dependencies, including configuration, patching, upgrades, certificates, capacity and platform health throughout the service lifecycle.
• Apply an automation-led approach by creating repeatable, testable and version-controlled workflows and integrations using scripting, configuration management, infrastructure as code, Git-based pipelines and OpenStack APIs.
• Develop and maintain scripts, services and integrations using OpenStack REST APIs, SDKs and command-line tooling to automate provisioning, validation, reporting and platform administration.
• Define and automate functional, integration, API, performance, upgrade, failover and recovery testing to validate changes and new capabilities before production use.
• Implement service-aware monitoring, logging, dashboards, alerts and synthetic checks, using reliability and capacity data to identify degradation and operational risk.
• Apply and validate platform security and resilience controls, including hardening, access control, vulnerability remediation, high availability, backup, restore, disaster recovery and rollback.
• Support incidents, problems, changes and critical releases through technical diagnosis, root-cause analysis and the elimination of recurring failures, including participation in an out-of-hours rota where required.
• Support the introduction of new service capabilities and customer onboarding by validating requirements, capacity, platform readiness, operability and support arrangements before launch.
• Create and maintain technical designs, service maps, configuration standards, test evidence, runbooks and operational documentation while mentoring engineers and reducing dependency on individual knowledge.

What you'll bring

Essential

• Strong hands-on experience building and operating production OpenStack platforms, with responsibility spanning multiple core services rather than a single component.
• Demonstrable experience diagnosing complex, cross-layer issues involving compute scheduling, virtual networking, block and object storage, and their underlying infrastructure dependencies.
• Advanced experience administering and troubleshooting Ubuntu/Linux environments across operating systems, networking, storage, processes, containers and distributed service dependencies.
• Practical experience integrating and operating Ceph within OpenStack, including Cinder and object storage services such as Swift or Ceph Object Gateway.
• Strong automation and scripting capability, preferably using Python, combined with practical experience in configuration management, infrastructure as code, Git-based pipelines and OpenStack APIs.
• Experience using OpenStack REST APIs, SDKs and automation pipelines to orchestrate cloud resources and platform operations.
• Proven experience implementing automated testing, monitoring, logging, alerting and dashboards for complex distributed platforms.
• Experience operating production platforms within established incident, problem, change and release practices, including controlled upgrades, rollback, root-cause analysis and operational readiness.
• Evidence of contributing to technical designs, peer reviews and cross-functional delivery involving Architecture, Network Engineering, Security, Platform/SRE and operational teams.
• Advanced proficiency in designing, building, operating and troubleshooting production OpenStack platforms across core compute, identity, image and storage services.
• Strong Linux/Ubuntu administration skills, including platform configuration, patching, upgrades, performance analysis and fault diagnosis.
• Strong understanding of Ceph, Cinder and Swift or equivalent object storage technologies, including capacity, replication, resilience and recovery.
• Practical knowledge of automated testing, observability, logging, monitoring and alerting, alongside the networking concepts required to integrate OpenStack with the network underlay and fabric.
• Communicates complex technical issues clearly to engineering and non-engineering stakeholders, documents decisions and risks accurately, and works constructively across Architecture, Security, Network Engineering, Platform/SRE, Service Delivery, Product and Customer Support. The role is expected to challenge weak assumptions, raise risks early, give and receive peer feedback, share knowledge and support others without creating dependency on one individual.

Desirable

• A degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering or a related discipline. Equivalent professional experience and a strong record of hands-on delivery in complex production environments are equally valued.