DevOps Engineer

Job Description

As a DevOps Engineer, you will play a key role in designing, automating, operating, and evolving our container platforms and data services. You will work in a cloud‑native and hybrid infrastructure spanning Red Hat OpenShift (on‑prem) and Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS).
You will focus on platform reliability, automation, and secure-by-design delivery, enabling application and analytics teams to deploy and operate mission‑critical workloads in a scalable and predictable way. Infrastructure and platform components are managed using Infrastructure as Code and GitOps‑driven workflows, with a strong emphasis on consistency, security, and operational excellence.

Key Responsibilities 

Platform Operations & Automation

• Operate, maintain, and continuously improve Red Hat OpenShift and AKS clusters in production environments, ensuring availability, scalability, and security.
• Design and implement automation using Ansible Automation Platform and Terraform for platform provisioning, configuration management, and lifecycle operations.
• Support containerized workloads using Helm, Operators, and GitOps patterns.
• Collaborate with developers and architects to define platform standards, deployment patterns, and DevOps best practices.
• Enable and support self‑service capabilities for application teams while maintaining platform guardrails.

CI/CD, GitOps & Artifact Management

• Design, implement, and maintain CI/CD pipelines based on GitHub and GitOps principles.
• Support container image build, versioning, and promotion workflows across environments.
• Integrate and manage artifact registries, including:
  
  • Azure Container Registry (ACR) for AKS
  • Red Hat Quay or other OCI‑compliant registries for OpenShift
• Ensure secure handling of artifacts, image signing, scanning, and lifecycle management.
• Support deployment automation using Argo CD–based GitOps workflows.

Cloud & Hybrid Infrastructure

• Manage workloads across AKS (Azure) and on‑prem OpenShift, including hybrid connectivity patterns.
• Integrate Kubernetes platforms with Azure‑native services where appropriate.
• Design and operate networking, ingress/egress, storage, and identity integrations in Kubernetes environments.
• Support high‑throughput and low‑latency data platforms, including:
  
  • Kafka
  • HiveMQ
  • ClickHouse

Observability, Reliability & Operations

• Implement and operate observability stacks using Prometheus, Grafana, and centralized logging solutions.
• Troubleshoot platform‑level issues, including performance degradation, networking problems, and cluster misconfigurations.
• Participate in incident response and on‑call rotations for critical platform services.
• Contribute to runbooks, documentation, and operational maturity of the platform.

What we do for you

We offer you the opportunity to join one of the world’s premier research centers in nanotechnology at its headquarters in Leuven, Belgium. With your talent, passion and expertise, you’ll become part of a team that makes the impossible possible. Together, we shape the technology that will determine the society of tomorrow.

We are committed to being an inclusive employer and proud of our open, multicultural, and informal working environment with ample possibilities to take initiative and show responsibility. We commit to supporting and guiding you in this process; not only with words but also with tangible actions. Through imec.academy, 'our corporate university', we actively invest in your development to further your technical and personal growth. 

We are aware that your valuable contribution makes imec a top player in its field. Your energy and commitment are therefore appreciated by means of a market appropriate salary with many fringe benefits. 

Who you are

• Strong hands‑on experience operating Red Hat OpenShift and/or AKS in production.
• Solid understanding of Kubernetes internals, container networking, and storage concepts.
• Proven experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and automation frameworks (Ansible).
• Experience with GitHub‑based workflows and GitOps deployment models.
• Hands‑on exposure to Kafka, HiveMQ, and distributed data platforms.
• Experience with container image lifecycle management and artifact registries (e.g. ACR, Quay, OCI).
• Familiarity with observability tooling and production troubleshooting.
• Strong analytical mindset with good documentation and collaboration skills.

Bonus Skills

• Security by design: experience with network segmentation, zero‑trust principles, Kubernetes NetworkPolicies, and egress control.
• Knowledge of service mesh concepts (e.g. Istio).
• Experience integrating Kubernetes platforms with enterprise firewalls and security controls.
• Familiarity with compliance‑driven or regulated environments.

IMEC and its affiliates will not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from a candidate. IMEC will consider unsolicited referrals and/or resumes submitted by vendors such as search firms, staffing agencies, professional recruiters, fee-based referral services and recruiting agencies (hereafter “Agency”) to have been referred by the Agency free of charge. IMEC will not pay a fee to any Agency that does not have a prior written agreement with IMEC, validated by its HR department, in place regarding a specific job opening and allowing to submit resumes.