Senior DevOps Engineer (Rancher)

Dubai, UAE Full-time Temporary

What We Need

At Oivan, we are looking for a highly skilled Rancher Expert to lead the design, deployment, and management of enterprise-grade Kubernetes platforms. In this role, you will be the go-to authority for container orchestration using SUSE Rancher, driving standardization across multi-cluster environments spanning on- premise, hybrid, and multi-cloud infrastructure.

You will collaborate with DevOps, development, and security teams to build resilient, scalable, and automated platforms that power critical workloads. Your expertise will shape our infrastructure strategy, establish best practices, and mentor junior engineers on the team.

This position is a full-time role based in Dubai, UAE working at the clients' premises for a one-year contract (extendable).

For this role, we need a fluent Arabic speaker => if you're not one then please apply to our other role.

What You'll Do

Your responsibilities will be the following:

Rancher & Kubernetes Platform

• Deploy, configure, and manage SUSE Rancher (RKE1 / RKE2 / K3s) clusters at enterprise scale
• Design multi-cluster architectures with high availability, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery
• Manage cluster lifecycle: upgrades, node scaling, certificate rotation, and etcd backups
• Enforce RBAC, network policies, and Pod Security Standards across all clusters
• Integrate Rancher with identity providers (LDAP, Active Directory, OIDC) for centralized auth

Helm & Application Delivery

• Develop, maintain, and version-control Helm charts for internal and third- party applications
• Implement GitOps workflows using Flux CD or Argo CD for declarative application delivery
• Manage Helm repositories, chart dependencies, and release strategies(canary, blue/green)
• Define Helmfile configurations for multi-environment deployments DevOps & CI/CD

DevOps & CI/CD

• Architect and maintain CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or Tekton
• Integrate pipelines with container registries (Harbor, ECR, GCR) and image scanning tools
• Automate infrastructure provisioning and configuration management with Ansible and Terraform
• Drive shift-left security practices including SAST, container image scanning,and policy-as-code

Infrastructure & Cloud

• Design and maintain IaC (Infrastructure as Code) using Terraform and Pulumi
• Manage cloud environments on AWS, GCP, or Azure — including networking, IAM, and cost optimization
• Oversee on-premise and hybrid infrastructure integrated with cloud platforms
• Implement service mesh solutions (Istio / Linkerd) for advanced traffic management and observability
• Configure storage backends: Longhorn, Ceph, NFS, and cloud-native persistent volumes

Hypervisor & Virtualization

• Strong knowledge in VMware vSphere / ESXi, Proxmox, or Harvester HCI for on-premise workloads
• Deploy and manage Harvester (SUSE HCI) as the hypervisor layer beneath Rancher clusters
• Integrate bare-metal and VM-based nodes into Rancher-managed Kubernetes clusters
• Optimize VM resource allocation, networking (NSX-T / OVN), and storage for
• Kubernetes Workloads

Monitoring, Logging & Security

• Deploy and maintain observability stacks: Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, Thanos
• Experience with SUSE NeuVector; Implement centralized logging with Elasticsearch / OpenSearch, Fluentd /Fluent Bit, and Kibana
• Conduct vulnerability assessments, CIS benchmark hardening, and Kubernetes security audits
• Manage secrets using HashiCorp Vault, Sealed Secrets, or External Secrets Operator

What You Have

Our ideal team member will have the folllowing qualifications:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or relatedfield
• 5+ years of hands-on Kubernetes experience in production environments
• Proven track record managing large-scale, multi-cluster Rancher environments
• 7+ years of total experience in DevOps, infrastructure, or platform engineering
• Good communication skills including fluent English and Arabic.

Preferred certifications
o Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) — strongly preferred
o Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
o SUSE Certified Rancher Expert
o HashiCorp Terraform Associate or Professional
o AWS Solutions Architect / GCP Professional Cloud Architect / Azure
Solutions Architect

What We Offer

• An international workforce to learn from and grow with - we have a diverse, multicultural workforce with Nordic values
• A fair compensation package and a considerable annual leave of 25 days per annum. We support our staff to be with family at the most important time. Partners with a newborn baby can have additional holidays.
• Opportunities for growth and enrichment through Grow with Oivan, our internal learning and development departments
• Line devices Mac or PC within a fixed company budget
• Team building activities, movie nights, events

Privacy Notice

At Oivan, we appreciate different lifestyles and cultural backgrounds. We welcome diversity as a strength. We consider all applications equally regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, national origin, age, citizenship, marital status, disability, orientation or gender identity. We strongly encourage individuals from groups traditionally underrepresented in tech to apply.

Oivan company culture is reflective of our core values. The decisions we make today influence our tomorrow. We are sincere in our responsibility towards our employees, customers and the environment. Fellowship unites us as an international community of thinkers and doers. Throughout our hiring process, you’ll have access to a broad representation of the Oivan team to get to know us as we learn about you.