Lead DevOps Engineer

Senior technical leader driving cloud-native, provider-agnostic infrastructure strategy across hybrid environments (Proxmox VE on-prem, hyperscaler cloud, GCP minority cloud). Balances technical direction with people leadership, ensuring systems are portable, resilient, secure, cost-optimized, and developer-friendly. Responsibilities: Infrastructure Leadership Architect hybrid infrastructure spanning on-premises and multi-cloud.Define provider-agnostic standards to avoid lock-in.Own IaC strategy with Terraform multi-provider modules.Lead disaster recovery, HA, SLA/SLO governance.On-Premises Infrastructure (Proxmox VE) Manage Proxmox clusters, HA groups, VM/LXC provisioning.Govern storage (ZFS, Ceph, NFS/iSCSI) and SDN.Integrate with IaC/GitOps workflows.Operate Proxmox Backup Server, enforce RTO/RPO.Use Proxmox as compute layer for Kubernetes clusters.Monitor via Prometheus/Grafana, enforce CIS security baselines.Cloud-Native Platform Engineering Standardize Kubernetes runtime across environments.Drive GitOps-first delivery (ArgoCD/Flux).Use Helm/Kustomize for packaging.Adopt OpenTelemetry for observability.Enforce service mesh (Istio, Cilium, Linkerd).Apply policy-as-code (OPA, Kyverno).Design provider-agnostic CI/CD pipelines.Multi-Cloud Strategy Select providers based on workload/cost, not inertia.Manage GCP for analytics/Kubernetes.Onboard additional providers (Alibaba, OCI, Hetzner, etc.) seamlessly.Enforce cross-cloud networking via WireGuard/Tailscale.Centralize identity federation via OIDC/SAML.Internal Developer Platform (IDP) Own IDP as a product with roadmap and SLAs.Provide self-service provisioning across environments.Enable ephemeral environments on demand.Maintain service catalog/developer portal (Backstage, Port.io).Enforce RBAC/policies via OPA/Kyverno.Measure DevEx via DORA metrics and adoption rates.FinOps & Cost Governance Treat cloud spend as engineering concern.Use provider-agnostic FinOps tooling (Kubecost, OpenCost).Apply per-provider governance (AWS/Azure RIs, GCP CUDs, Proxmox TCO).Integrate billing APIs into unified dashboards.People Management & Leadership Lead platform engineers around cloud-native teams.Build skills in open-source tech (Kubernetes, Terraform, Prometheus).Develop FinOps and DevEx champions.Advocate ROI of cloud-native investment.Strategic & Cross-Functional Own infrastructure roadmap.Make workload placement decisions based on cost, latency, compliance.Partner with Security/Compliance/Engineering for unified governance. Qualifications: Required Skills Cloud-Native Platform: Kubernetes, Helm, Kustomize, GitOps.IaC & Automation: Terraform, Ansible, Packer, Crossplane.Networking/Service Mesh: Istio, Cilium, Linkerd, WireGuard, OVS.Observability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, ELK.Policy & Security: OPA, Kyverno, Vault, DevSecOps.On-Prem (Proxmox VE): Cluster mgmt, HA, ZFS, Ceph, PBS, SDN.Cloud Providers: AWS/Azure (primary), GCP (minority).IDP Tools: Backstage, Port.io, Humanitec.CI/CD: GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, Tekton.FinOps: Kubecost, OpenCost, CloudHealth.Languages/Scripting: Python, Bash, Go, Terraform HCL, TypeScript.Leadership: Team management, roadmap planning, stakeholder communication.Plus Skills Experience integrating non-hyperscaler clouds (Alibaba, OCI, Hetzner, Cloudflare, Huawei, IBM).Ability to rapidly onboard providers into cloud-native stack.Nice to Have – AI-Powered Automation AI-assisted IaC generation (Terraform Copilot, Pulumi AI).AIOps for observability (Grafana ML, Elastic AIOps).AI-powered runbook automation (LangChain, OpenAI).ChatOps with AI for infra queries and cost summaries.Autonomous infra agents for natural language provisioning.Key KPIs Cloud-native adoption rate (% workloads on Kubernetes).IDP adoption rate (% teams using self-service).Developer onboarding velocity.Deployment frequency & lead time (DORA metrics).Proxmox cluster availability ≥99.9%.Provider portability score (% workloads redeployable cross-cloud).Multi-cloud + on-prem cost savings.MTTR for production incidents.