Senior Proxmox Engineer (3-month contract)

Description

You will join a Dutch engineering team that runs private cloud services for government and regulated-market customers in the Netherlands. The client is a managed services provider that operates this platform.

This is a full-time contract lasting three months, with a possible extension. The goal is to check that the client's two Proxmox environments, the out-of-band environment and the one that supports the OpenStack platform, are built and configured to good practice. You will bring them to a stable state and pass the knowledge on to the engineers who will run them.

The work has three phases. First, you assess how the environments are built and configured and identify gaps, risks and needed changes. Second, you fix the findings and confirm the sizing fits both current and expected load, so the platform behaves predictably under normal use rather than only under stress. Third, you work alongside the operational engineer who will take over, so knowledge moves through daily hands-on work instead of a handover document.

The company develops software solutions for clients around the world.

Responsibilities

• Review the Proxmox VE environments, covering cluster configuration, storage, networking, high availability and backup, compare them with good practice, and write up what you find.
• Find configuration gaps, single points of failure and operational risks, and recommend specific fixes.
• Check sizing and capacity against current and expected load, and state clearly where the environment will fall short.
• Carry out the agreed corrections and improvements, then confirm they work as intended.
• Test backup and restore, including whether a full recovery works from start to finish.
• Work with the OpenStack team to make sure the Proxmox layer meets what the platform above it needs.
• Write documentation and runbooks that another engineer can follow without you.
• Work day to day with the client's operational engineer so they learn the environment as you go.
• Report progress and findings directly to the client's engineers and managers in the Netherlands.

Requirements

• At least 10 years in IT infrastructure and virtualisation, including at least 2 years running Proxmox VE in production.
• Hands-on production experience with Proxmox VE, including cluster setup, configuration and upgrades.
• Experience with the storage layer under Proxmox and a working understanding of its performance behaviour.
• Advanced Linux system administration, particularly on Debian-based distributions.
• Networking in virtualised setups, including bridges, bonds, VLANs and SDN, and the ability to troubleshoot compute, storage and network issues together.
• Capacity and performance analysis, with the ability to judge whether an environment is sized correctly for its load and to back that up with data.
• Backup and restore experience in production, including verifying that restores succeed.
• Scripting for automation in Bash, Python or Ansible.
• Experience assessing an environment you did not build and documenting findings the client can act on.
• English at C1 level, the working language with the client.
• Ability to work independently from an open-ended brief with no task list. You decide what to check, in what order, and report what you find.
• Clear communication of findings, including unwelcome ones. If sizing is wrong or a configuration is unsafe, you say so plainly and early.
• Ability to separate critical issues from lower-priority ones and justify the priority.
• Willingness to teach. The operational engineer should be able to run the environment after you leave.
• Keeping people informed: you report where work stands, raise delays early and do not let problems go quiet.
• Building working relationships remotely, since most contact with the Dutch team is remote. Trust comes from reliability and clear communication.
• Additional skill: understanding of how OpenStack uses the infrastructure beneath it.
• Additional skill: experience with other virtualisation platforms such as VMware or KVM/libvirt, and with migrations between them.
• Additional skill: Ceph at scale.
• Additional skill: infrastructure as code with Ansible or Terraform.
• Additional skill: experience in a regulated or government environment.
• Additional skill: any level of Dutch.

Conditions

Full-time, three-month contract with a possible extension.

Most contact with the Dutch team takes place remotely.

Flexible remote working options are available.

Travel may be required for international projects.

Equal opportunity: the company welcomes applications from all backgrounds.

Benefits

• Flexible and remote working options.
• Work on international projects for leading global clients.
• Travel linked to international projects.
• A non-corporate working atmosphere.
• Access to language classes.
• Access to knowledge-sharing initiatives.
• Access to private healthcare and life insurance.
• Access to a multisport card.
• Benefits and their terms may vary depending on the form of cooperation chosen.