DevOps & Platform Engineer

Balkantel Ltd. is an engineering company specializing in R&D, manufacturing and integration of technology in critical infrastructure.

With over 30 years of engineering experience and in partnership with worldwide technology leaders, companies from the US and Europe, we have completed projects of international importance, such as:

• The first national digital fiber optics network

• Modernization of military and civilian airports to NATO and ICAO standards

• Signalling and telecommunication systems on high-speed railway sections

• Unified radio coverage of the territory of Bulgaria to ensure airspace protection

• The first digital communication network of BULATSA

Are you ready for new challenges? Apply now and check if you have the necessary qualities!

Job description:

– Architect, deploy, and maintain enterprise-grade CI/CD infrastructure based on GitLab

– Design and implement complex, multi-stage CI/CD pipelines with high scalability and performance

– Build and manage Kubernetes clusters from the ground up:

– Control plane design

– Worker node lifecycle management

– Cluster scaling and upgrades

– Architect and optimize CI/CD runners (auto-scaling, distributed workloads)

– Develop and maintain custom Docker images with a focus on performance, security, and reproducibility

– Define and implement containerization and orchestration best practices

– Build and manage internal package distribution systems, including RPM/YUM/DNF repositories

– Automate infrastructure provisioning and configuration using Ansible, Packer, Terraform

– Ensure high availability, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery capabilities

– Establish infrastructure standards, best practices, and reusable modules

– Optimize build pipelines for speed, efficiency, and cost

– Develop and maintain custom OS artifacts:

– Custom ISO images

– Cloud-init configurations

– Golden images

– Design and implement automated deployment frameworks for complex environments:

– Multi-OS virtual machine infrastructures

– Hybrid and isolated environments

Skills & Qualification:

– Extensive hands-on experience with GitLab and GitLab CI/CD in large-scale environments

– Deep expertise in Kubernetes, including:

= Cluster bootstrapping (kubeadm or equivalent)

= Networking (CNI plugins)

= Storage (CSI)

= Security (RBAC, PSP/OPA, NetworkPolicies)

– Advanced experience with containerization:

= Docker (multi-stage builds, image optimization, hardening)

– Proven experience designing and scaling CI/CD systems

– Strong Linux systems engineering background (kernel, systemd, networking, storage)

– Solid understanding of networking fundamentals

– Core protocols:

= TCP/IP

= UDP and trade-offs vs TCP

= ICMP (diagnostics, troubleshooting)

= DNS (resolution process, caching, zones, split-horizon DNS)

= HTTP/HTTPS (including HTTP/2, HTTP/3, TLS handshake)

– Routing & traffic management:

= L3/L4 routing concepts

= NAT, PAT

= Anycast / Unicast / Multicast

– Load balancing & traffic distribution:

= L4 vs L7 load balancing

= Reverse proxies (Nginx, HAProxy, Envoy)

= Ingress controllers (Kubernetes)

– Security & network isolation:

= Firewalls (iptables/nftables)

= NetworkPolicies (Kubernetes)

= VPN (IPsec, WireGuard, OpenVPN)

= TLS/mTLS, certificate management

– Container & Kubernetes networking:

= CNI plugins (Calico, Flannel, Cilium)

= Pod-to-pod and service networking

= Service types (ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer)

= kube-proxy / eBPF-based networking

– Observability & troubleshooting:

= Packet analysis (tcpdump, Wireshark)

= Connection debugging (netstat, ss)

= Latency analysis and bottleneck identification

– Strong experience with infrastructure automation using:

= Ansible

= Packer

= Terraform

– Experience with virtualization and VM lifecycle management

– Hands-on experience building and maintaining RPM/YUM/DNF repositories

– Expert-level proficiency in Bash scripting, with proven experience in:

= Designing, maintaining, and extending complex automation scripts

= Supporting and evolving existing large-scale scripting codebases

= Automating testing, deployment, and infrastructure workflows

– Еnsuring reliability, maintainability, and performance of automation scripts in production environments

– Strong experience with Python (or equivalent) for advanced automation, tooling, and integrations

– Experience designing and implementing observability platforms:

= Monitoring

= Prometheus

= Grafana

= Logging

= ELK Stack

= OpenSearch

– Experience implementing full observability stacks

– Strong understanding of security best practices:

= Container security (image scanning, runtime protection)

= CI/CD pipeline security

– Experience with secrets management and secure configuration

– Knowledge of compliance and hardening standards

20 Excellent Reasons To Join Balkantel:

• Global leader in the Transport, Aerospace and Defence sectors

• High-tech products and solutions

• Innovative technologies

• International standards of professionalism

• Career development opportunities

• Interesting and challenging projects

• Friendly & positive work environment

• Competitive remuneration package

• Attractive bonus system

• Internal and external trainings

• Social activities

• Additional health insurance

• Preventive medical examinations

• MultiSport card

• Referral program

• Monday-Friday working schedule

• Modern office space

• Fresh fruits & drinks

• Attractive terms & Discounts for various products and services

• Corporate events

If you are interested in this job opportunity, please send a CV. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

Data collected will be considered in strict confidentiality and used for recruitment purposes only.

Balkantel Ltd. guarantees the confidentiality of the candidates, as required by the GDPR.