In­fra­struc­ture Evolution Engineer (Platforms & Auto­ma­tion) (in Germany)

EUMETSAT is a key player in the European Space Sector, responsible for operating Europe's weather and climate monitoring satellites. Our core duties encompass the collection, distribution, and long-term preservation of invaluable Earth Observation data. The satellites we operate serve multiple essential functions, from supplying environmental data critical for European weather forecasting agencies to providing vital indicators for climate change and supporting emergency rescue beacon responses.

EUMETSAT is entering a pivotal phase, with multiple satellite launches and a broad technology refresh across the ground segment. The Computing Service, within the IT Infrastructure & Data Division (I2D), underpins mission-critical processing and commanding of satellites. As our estate evolves, we are standardising software delivery and infrastructure provisioning to increase reliability, velocity, and auditability.

The Evolution Engineer plays a key role in shaping and modernizing the company's IT infrastructure. This position focuses on improving the scalability, resilience, and automation of compute, storage, and container platforms to support current and future business needs. The successful candidate will help define the technical direction of the infrastructure landscape and ensure the seamless evolution of core systems.

Duties

• Infrastructure modernization: Develop and deliver the roadmap for the continuous evolution of compute, virtualization, and container platforms to improve reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency.

• Software-defined storage evolution: Lead the design and enhancement of enterprise storage platforms, including IBM Spectrum Scale (GPFS) and Ceph, ensuring performance, resilience, and smooth integration with the wider infrastructure.

• Automation and standardization: Build and maintain Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) frameworks and automation pipelines using tools such as Ansible or Terraform to streamline provisioning, configuration, and system lifecycle management.

• Hybrid environment integration: Connect and manage on-premises, virtualized, and cloud-native systems, ensuring consistency in governance, observability, and performance.

• Performance and capacity optimization: Monitor, analyse, and fine-tune infrastructure performance; forecast capacity requirements to support future growth and stability.

• Observability and operations: Operate and improve monitoring and telemetry systems to ensure proactive issue detection and faster incident resolution.

• Governance and documentation: Produce clear technical documentation, change records, and migration guides in line with ITIL and internal quality standards.

• Collaboration and knowledge sharing: Work closely with DevOps, platform, and network teams to align infrastructure initiatives and promote automation best practices across the organization.

Skills and Experience

• Strong background in enterprise infrastructure engineering, with hands-on experience in modernization and lifecycle management.
• Expertise with software-defined storage technologies such as IBM Spectrum Scale (GPFS) and Ceph.
• Practical experience with Kubernetes and OpenStack environments, including deployment, maintenance, and integration.
• Proficiency in automation and Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) using Ansible, Terraform, or equivalent tools.
• Solid understanding of performance optimization, capacity management, and observability practices in large-scale environments.
• Familiarity with enterprise monitoring and logging tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, vRealize, or Splunk.
• Strong communication and documentation skills, with the ability to work effectively across technical and operational teams.

What we offer:

• Excellent salary, of up to Euro 8,500 NET (after tax) based on skills and experience;
• Flexible working time including additional flexi-leave;
• Full medical coverage for employee and family;
• Attractive pension;
• 30 days of annual leave + 14.5 days public holidays;
• Training and development support;
• Relocation allowance and support (if applicable).

Employment Conditions

The initial contract will be of 4 years’ duration, with subsequent 5 year contracts being awarded thereafter, subject to individual performance and organisation requirements. There is no limit to the amount of follow-up contracts a staff member can receive up to the EUMETSAT retirement age of 63 and there are certainly opportunities to establish a long career perspective at EUMETSAT.

This post is graded A2/A4 on the EUMETSAT salary scales. The minimum basic salary for this post is EURO 7,340 per month (net of internal tax but excluding pension contribution and insurances) which may be negotiable on the basis of skills and experience. The salary scale provides for increments on the anniversary of taking up employment, and scales are reviewed by the EUMETSAT Council with effect from 1 January each year. In addition to basic salary, EUMETSAT offers attractive benefits. Further information, including salary details, is available on the EUMETSAT web site.

APPLICATIONS MUST BE SUBMITTED IN ENGLISH. WE WILL BE UNABLE TO CONSIDER APPLICATIONS SUBMITTED IN OTHER LANGUAGES.

EUMETSAT is an international organisation employing staff from across all 30 member states and this role is being advertised on multiple international job boards, but please note that this role would be based in Darmstadt, Germany and would require international applicants to relocate if successful. Remote working is not an option for this role. More about us EUMETSAT's role is to establish and operate meteorological satellites to monitor the weather and climate from space - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This information is supplied to the National Meteorological Services of the organisation's Member and Cooperating States in Europe, as well as other users worldwide. EUMETSAT also operates several Copernicus missions on behalf of the European Union and provide data services to the Copernicus marine and atmospheric services and their users.

As an intergovernmental European Organisation, EUMETSAT can recruit nationals only from the 30 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and the United Kingdom).