Senior Platform & Reliability Engineer

Your creative field We are looking for a full-time, permanent Senior Platform & Reliability Engineer (all genders) to start as soon as possible. We live remote-first, but you have the freedom to choose whether you want to work hybrid or completely on-site due to your proximity to one of our locations (Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg, Munich). Role - Senior Platform & Reliability Engineer at Contabo - Take architectural ownership of our shared infrastructure services – the foundation that multiple development teams build on - API gateway and ingress (Kong, Nginx Ingress) - persistent storage (Ceph, Longhorn) - secrets and identity infrastructure (Vault, Keycloak) - edge security and WAF (Cloudflare) - observability stack - Take over grown, partially under-documented systems; identify and remediate known weak points - Evaluate aging components with solution-agnostic build-vs-buy reasoning - Decide which legacy pieces get fixed, replaced, or retired - Design and establish an on-call process, including runbooks for platform and infrastructure incidents - Mature our observability practices, rolling out distributed tracing, SLOs/SLIs, and meaningful dashboards across the stack - Build on our existing tooling with Prometheus, Grafana, Alloy, and OpenTelemetry - In system design reviews, apply fundamentals: load balancing, caching, sharding, replication, consistency trade-offs - Act as the technical authority across teams for shared infrastructure services - Document knowledge consistently and actively distribute it so critical know-how isn’t dependent on a single person Success in this role - Known risks are resolved - Solid on-call process up and running - Single points of failure are measurably reduced platform-wide Location and travel - The position is remote (Germany), with hybrid or on-site work optional - Occasional travel for datacenter visits and team offsites is part of the role What convinces us you’re a fit - Your personality, paired with: - 7+ years of experience in platform, infrastructure, or SRE roles, ideally with end-to-end responsibility for a private cloud or IaaS platform - Hands-on production experience with distributed storage systems (Ceph) and Kubernetes persistent storage (Longhorn or comparable) - Experience operating API gateways and ingress (Kong, Nginx Ingress, or comparable), including debugging cross-cutting concerns like CORS and rate limiting - Experience with CDN/edge security, DDoS mitigation, and WAF configuration (e.g. Cloudflare), as well as firewall-rule design - A strong grounding in system design fundamentals (load balancing, caching, sharding/replication, consistency models, message queues) and the judgment to apply them to real-world trade-offs - Experience designing or maturing observability (tracing, metrics, SLOs/SLIs) with tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and OpenTelemetry is desirable - Experience with secrets/identity infrastructure (Vault, Keycloak), messaging systems (NATS), and building on-call processes and incident runbooks from scratch is a plus - Composure working with grown, incompletely documented systems – paired with pragmatism and perfectionism: fix what’s broken, retire what’s dead, rather than rewriting everything - Genuine enjoyment of acting as the technical go-to person across teams, actively sharing and documenting your knowledge - Professional fluency in English (our working language); German language skills, certifications (CKA/CKS, Ceph training), and experience with virtualization platforms (Proxmox, OpenStack) are a plus Awesome Prospects - At Contabo, we are constantly evolving. Our growth creates space for new ideas, ownership, and real impact for people who want to make a difference. - What defines us is trust, direct communication, and an open feedback culture - We believe the best solutions are built together and that everyone has the opportunity to contribute, grow, and leave their own footprint - Additionally, we offer: - Work the way that fits your life – Remote or hybrid with flexible hours for a healthy work-life balance and the same technical equipment at home as in the office - Experience real freedom – Workation across the EU and in our summer office in Mallorca - Stay active and healthy – Access to EGYM Wellpass and thousands of fitness and wellness facilities - Enjoy exclusive perks – Attractive discounts on many products and services through our corporate benefits program - Recharge your energy – 30 days of vacation plus additional days off on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve - Give back – An extra day off to get involved in social activities through our Volunteer Day - Make an impact – Take ownership and bring your ideas to life with real creative freedom - Keep growing – Individual professional and personal development opportunities in an innovative tech environment - Feel comfortable where you work – Modern, conveniently located offices across our European locations - Be part of a diverse team – Work in an international environment shaped by diversity - Create lasting memories – Company events and team activities you won’t forget How to reach us - If you have any questions, you can reach out to Max by email at maximilian.kasemir@contabo.de About us - Contabo - High-quality Cloud Hosting Made in Germany! - As a leading infrastructure service provider in the field of cloud instances and dedicated servers, we have stood for first-class quality, reliability and favorable prices since our foundation in Munich in 2003 - Meanwhile, more than 300,000 customers in over 190 countries trust our services - We specialize in providing German quality to users worldwide, focusing on the stability and security of our data centers, the optimization of internal processes, and excellent customer support - Become a part of our future-oriented company, which plays a significant role in the development of digital cloud hosting, and support us with your ideas and commitment