DevOps Engineer - Databases - Humankind

Your mission

We are looking for a hands-on DevOps Engineer to join our Data team within the Internal Developer Platform (IDP) department. You will deploy, automate, and maintain databases — primarily on Kubernetes — serving 500+ developers across multiple environments.

This is a practical, engineering-heavy role. You will work daily with Kubernetes operators, Helm charts, Ansible playbooks, and CI/CD pipelines to keep databases running reliably at scale. If you have deployed and managed any database on Kubernetes (PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, MySQL, MongoDB — anything counts), and you enjoy solving real operational problems rather than just writing YAML, this role is for you.

You will join a small, focused team of experienced engineers and start contributing from day one. We value practical experience over theoretical knowledge.

What You Will Do

a) Deploy and operate databases on Kubernetes

• Deploy and manage database clusters using Kubernetes operators (e.g., CloudNativePG, ECK, or any equivalent operator you have worked with).

• Handle day-to-day database operations: provisioning, scaling, backups, failover, upgrades, and user management.

• Troubleshoot production issues across multiple database engines (PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, MySQL, Cassandra, ClickHouse, MongoDB).

b) Build and maintain automation

• Write and maintain Ansible playbooks, Helm charts, and Terraform modules for database lifecycle management.

• Automate repetitive operational tasks: credential rotation, configuration drift detection, and backup verification.

• Integrate database services with GitOps workflows (ArgoCD) and secrets management (External Secrets Operator, OpenBao).

c) Support the platform and the team

• Create operational runbooks and documentation for database procedures.

• Collaborate with other teams on monitoring, alerting, and access control for databases.

Requirements

What you’ll bring

• 3+ years in a DevOps, SRE, or Infrastructure Engineer role with real production responsibilities.

• Kubernetes experience: you have deployed and operated workloads on Kubernetes in production — not just local clusters. Understanding of StatefulSets, PVCs, operators, and how stateful applications behave on K8s.

• Database deployment experience on Kubernetes: you have deployed at least one database engine on K8s using an operator or Helm chart. You know the caveats — storage classes, backup strategies, failover behavior, data persistence. Any database counts (PostgreSQL, MySQL, Elasticsearch, MongoDB, Redis, etc.).

• Automation skills: practical experience with at least two of: Ansible, Terraform, Helm. You write automation that others can read, use, and maintain.

• Linux fundamentals: comfortable with troubleshooting, networking, and system administration on Linux.

• CI/CD familiarity: experience with GitLab CI, ArgoCD, or similar pipeline/GitOps tools.

• Communication: able to work effectively in English (written and spoken) in a distributed team.

Nice to Have (We Will Teach the Rest)

• Experience with PostgreSQL administration (tuning, replication, HA/DR).

• Familiarity with Elasticsearch or other search/analytics databases.

• Experience with monitoring and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK).

• Python, Go, or Bash scripting for building automation and tooling.

• Exposure to secrets management (Vault/OpenBao, External Secrets Operator).

• Experience migrating databases from VMs to Kubernetes.