N-iX is looking for Senior Platform Engineer/EKS to join the team

Client Overview:

Our client is an Azerbaijani telecommunications company, the largest mobile network operator in Azerbaijan. The main products are: Fixed telephony, Mobile telephony, Internet services, Wireless broadband, and Value-added services.

Project Objectives:

The primary goal is to accelerate the client’s Data & AI initiatives via a secure, hybrid cloud foundation on AWS while systematically modernizing the IT estate as part of the cloud migration.

Key Project Objectives include:

Cloud Foundation & Landing Zone: Deploy target hybrid network architectures, establishing a secure Landing Zone and hybrid Data/AI platforms on AWS.
Security, Compliance & Governance: Operationalize on-prem tokenization (achieving zero raw PII in the cloud), resolve policy blockers to include AWS in the ISMS, and establish a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to govern Cloud adoption.
AI Chatbot & Voicebot Design & Implementation: Develop and operationalize a flagship Customer Care Chatbot and Voicebot as the first hybrid-setup consumer.

Key Responsibilities

Design, provision, and maintain production-grade Amazon EKS clusters across AWS cloud and on-premises environments using EKS Hybrid Nodes with Cilium VXLAN CNI overlay networking.
Implement dynamic node autoscaling and OS lifecycle management using Karpenter and immutable Bottlerocket node images across cloud and hybrid compute nodes.
Configure and manage EMR-on-EKS platform runtimes to execute distributed Big Data and PySpark batch/streaming analytics workloads.
Provision, optimize, and manage specialized GPU node pools (NVIDIA A100/L40S / EC2 GPU instances) for Azerbaijani SLM/LLM model training, fine-tuning, and low-latency speech inference (ASR / TTS voicebot pipelines).
Implement automated GitOps continuous deployment workflows using Argo CD and Helm charts for all Kubernetes platform components and application workloads.
Enforce cluster security, governance, and compliance using Kubernetes admission controllers and policy engines (e.g., OPA / Kyverno) alongside fine-grained Workload Identity (IRSA / Pod Identities).
Build and maintain Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) templates using Terraform and AWS CDK integrated into GitLab CI/CD pipelines for repeatable cluster lifecycle management.
Implement container microsegmentation, network security policies, and split-horizon DNS resolution across hybrid VPCs and on-premises substrates.
Integrate platform logging, metrics, and trace telemetry with Amazon CloudWatch and central on-premises Splunk / SOC SIEM ingestion pipelines.
Author technical documentation, cluster operational runbooks, disaster recovery (DR) procedures, and platform upgrade playbooks.

Requirements

Mandatory Technical Skills:

4+ years of hands-on experience in Platform Engineering, DevOps, or Site Reliability Engineering with a primary focus on enterprise Kubernetes / Amazon EKS.
Deep expertise with Amazon EKS, including EKS Hybrid Nodes architecture, Cilium CNI (VXLAN), and hybrid networking topologies.
Strong experience in cloud-native autoscaling using Karpenter and container-optimized operating systems (Bottlerocket).
Practical experience setting up and operating EMR-on-EKS for distributed data processing and Spark runtimes.
Hands-on experience with GPU node pool orchestration for AI/ML workloads, LLM/SLM serving, and real-time speech/voicebot inference.
Proficient with GitOps release methodologies using Argo CD, Helm, and automated CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI).
Solid knowledge of Kubernetes security, admission control (OPA / Kyverno), RBAC, secrets management (HashiCorp Vault / CyberArk), and pod security standards.
Strong proficiency in Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform or AWS CDK.

Strong Plus (Nice-to-Have Skills):

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and/or Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional or AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional.
Experience in telecom domain infrastructure, low-latency real-time voice/chat processing, or hybrid cloud data sovereignty architectures.
Familiarity with AWS Landing Zone Accelerator (LZA), AWS Transit Gateway, and AWS Lake Formation.

Soft Skills & Team Fit:

Strong critical thinking, problem-solving, and analytical skills.
Excellent communication and collaboration skills to work closely with cross-functional teams (Data Engineering, MLOps, Cloud/Network, Security).
Results-oriented, proactive mindset with strong ownership of deliverables within an Agile / Scrum framework.
Upper-Intermediate+ English level (written and spoken).

We offer*:

Flexible working format - remote, office-based or flexible
A competitive salary and good compensation package
Personalized career growth
Professional development tools (mentorship program, tech talks and trainings, centers of excellence, and more)
Active tech communities with regular knowledge sharing
Education reimbursement
Memorable anniversary presents
Corporate events and team buildings
Other location-specific benefits
not applicable for freelancers

Senior Platform Engineer/EKS

Job Description