Senior Cloud & Infrastructure Engineer - Project Delivery & Implementation (m/f/d)

Shape the utilities market of the future with us! Permanent / Full-time / Leipzig, Erfurt or Ilmenau (hybrid) – remote within Germany possible / Start ASAP Cuculus is looking for a hands-on senior engineer to design, build, implement and manage secure, scalable and cost-effective cloud and infrastructure environments for customer projects across cloud, on-premises and hybrid platforms. What is the role about? Own customer environment delivery from approved architecture through cloud provisioning, Infrastructure as Code, OpenShift/Kubernetes implementation, migration, production readiness, optimization and handover. This is not a routine Production Support role; the engineer will assist with critical customer issues requiring specialist expertise. Your Role at a Glance Cloud infrastructure and services • Design, deploy and manage cloud infrastructure and services across AWS, Azure or equivalent platforms, including on-premises and hybrid integrations. • Configure networking, identity and access management, compute, storage, databases, load balancers, DNS, firewalls and customer connectivity. • Translate approved architecture into development, UAT, staging, production, High Availability and Disaster Recovery environments. Infrastructure as Code, platforms and CI/CD • Implement version-controlled Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and develop secure, reusable modules for repeatable customer environment builds. • Deploy, configure and manage OpenShift and Kubernetes platforms, including networking, ingress, storage, certificates, RBAC, secrets and workload resources. • Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines and cloud automation using approved tools such as Ansible, Helm, GitOps, Python and Bash/Shell. Security, resilience, monitoring and cost • Apply cloud security, compliance and governance requirements across IAM/RBAC, encryption, secrets, network controls, operating systems and platform configuration. • Implement backup, High Availability and Disaster Recovery practices and validate recovery against defined RTO and RPO requirements where applicable. • Monitor performance, availability, security and cost; optimize scalability, resilience, capacity and cloud spending without compromising service requirements. Migrations, delivery and technical escalation • Assess and support infrastructure and workload migrations, including dependencies, cutover planning, rollback, validation and post-migration stabilization. • Troubleshoot complex infrastructure, cloud-platform, CI/CD and deployment issues during implementation, testing, go-live and major technical escalations. • Complete production-readiness checks, acceptance evidence, knowledge transfer and formal handover; routine operational ownership remains with Production Support. Standards, collaboration and responsible AI adoption • Develop cloud and infrastructure standards, architecture records, reusable modules, implementation guides, operational runbooks and support documentation. • Collaborate with developers, security teams, architects, DBAs, network specialists, project teams and customers to deliver complete working environments. • Use approved AI tools for IaC, pipeline development, automation, troubleshooting and documentation. Review, test and security-validate outputs and protect confidential data in line with company policy. Must-haves (to thrive in this role) Experience & education • 5+ years of relevant experience in cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, DevOps, infrastructure or system engineering. • Proven experience independently building and implementing customer or production environments end to end, including migration and production go-live activities. • A degree in computer science or a related field, or an equivalent qualification. Cloud, platforms & infrastructure • Hands-on experience with AWS, Azure or an equivalent enterprise platform. • Experience with on-premises or hybrid infrastructure, not only public cloud. • Hands-on experience with OpenShift and/or production-grade Kubernetes, together with strong Linux administration and troubleshooting skills. • Strong knowledge of networking, IAM, compute, storage, databases, load balancing, DNS, firewalls, private connectivity and TLS. Automation • Strong hands-on Terraform experience, including reusable modules, state management, version control and controlled infrastructure changes. • Experience building CI/CD pipelines and automation using Ansible, Python, Bash/Shell or equivalent tools. Operations & collaboration • Experience with cloud monitoring, security, compliance, backup, HA/DR, scalability and cost optimization. • Strong troubleshooting, customer-facing communication, documentation and cross-team collaboration skills, with responsible adoption of approved AI tools. Location & language  • You work from one of our offices in Leipzig, Erfurt or Ilmenau 3 days per week – or, if you live further away in Germany, you can come to one of our offices about once a month. • Our company language is English - good English skills are a must. Nice-to-haves (great if you have them, but not a dealbreaker) Platforms & tooling • Advanced OpenShift, EKS, AKS or comparable enterprise container-platform experience. • Helm, Kustomize, Argo CD, Flux, GitOps, Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD or GitHub Actions. • Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/OpenSearch, CloudWatch, Azure Monitor or comparable tooling. Experience & certifications • Hybrid-cloud or multi-cloud landing zones, migrations, upgrades and modernisation. • Relevant cloud, Terraform, OpenShift or Kubernetes certifications and exposure to FinOps, enterprise security or regulated environments. • Utilities, energy, Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), smart metering, HES or MDMS experience. Why us? We at Cuculus believe that work should be meaningful, fun, and enable growth. When you join us, you can expect an environment that trusts you, values collaboration, and gives you the freedom to take