Cloud Operations Engineer
Posting Start Date: 31 Mar 2026
Location: Darmstadt, DE
Company: Serco Plc
Job Introduction
Serco is a leading Space Services Provider with thousands of skilled resources that has supported over 50 space missions on behalf of more than 10 Space or Government agencies around the globe, including the ESA and NASA. Serco offers space capability across the full space lifecycle from satellite testing to launch services, LEOP to spacecraft operations, space surveillance to data management, and supporting downstream application development.
We are looking for a Cloud Operations Engineer who wants to work with real spaceoperations infrastructure, automate systems endtoend and be part of a team that values clean engineering, transparency, and continuous improvement. Most of your work will be within Open Telekom Cloud (OTC).
This is a hands-on role with a good mix of cloud engineering, automation, troubleshooting, documentation - and meaningful interaction with the people who depend on the infrastructure you build.
Responsibilities
Cloud Infrastructure Operations
You’ll work with the core cloud stack that powers mission-critical systems. Day to day:
- Deploy and support infrastructure in Open Telekom Cloud (OTC)
Examples: ECS (EC2), EVS (EBS) volumes, OBS (S3) buckets, project structure
- Work with cloud networking: VPCs, subnets, routing, VPN, VPC Peering, Transit VPC (Transit Gateway), Firewalls
- Monitor system health through cloud-native monitoring tools like: Cloud Eye (Cloud Watch), LTS (Cloud Watch Logs), Grafana
- Investigate and resolve incidents using logs, metrics and traces
- Maintain separate Dev/Test/Prod environments and keep them consistent
- Keep systems cost-efficient and reliable (we use tagging, cost dashboards, resource reviews)
Automation & Infrastructure-as-Code
You’ll help us automate everything that makes sense:
- Write Terraform modules from scratch for networking, compute, IAM, logging, etc.
(e.g. custom VPC module, SG module, ECS provisioning module)
- Build Ansible playbooks from scratch for OS baseline, agents, configuration and setups
- Keep IaC structured, documented and reusable
- Help build CI/CD for infrastructure management and configuration once pipeline integration is introduced
Responsibilities Extension
Security & Compliance
We operate in a controlled environment and you’ll help keep it safe:
- Apply leastprivilege access, secure defaults and strict SG/FW rules
- Manage encryption with KMS, audit logs through CTS (Cloud Trail)
- Follow internal guidelines, GDPR requirements and operations standards
- Participate in incident response and contribute to postincident improvements
Collaboration, Documentation & Ticketing
Cloud Operations here isn’t only about engineering - it’s also about working with people.
- Handle requests and incidents through our ticketing workflow (user questions, infrastructure issues, operational tasks).
- Interact directly with customers and internal teams:
explain decisions, clarify requirements, help users understand what’s happening.
- Keep tickets welldocumented with meaningful updates: what was done, why it was done, and what comes next.
- Create and maintain documentation: runbooks, architectural diagrams, troubleshooting procedures, operational notes.
- Propose improvements to processes, tools, and workflows - and help drive their implementation.
Profile
- Basic understanding of cloud infrastructure, networking and security concepts
- Understanding of hypervisors like KVM/QEMU, Vmware ESXi
- Experience with Open Telekom Cloud (OTC) or similar cloud platforms
- Ability to write Terraform modules from scratch
- Ability to write Ansible playbooks from scratch
- Linux knowledge. Pre and post deployment automation activities (Ubuntu, AlmaLinux, SLES, RedHat)
- Basic knowledge of OpenStack (projects, networks, volumes, images)
- Understanding of routing, VPN basics, firewalling, segmentation
- Understanding of monitoring/observability basics (metrics vs logs, dashboards, thresholds, alerts)
- Basic scripting skills in Bash or Python (automation helpers, small scripts)
- Familiarity with cloud-native monitoring/logging tools:
Cloud Eye, Log Tank Service
- Experience with Git (branches, merge requests, versioning)
- Basic understanding of CI/CD concepts (e.g., GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins)
- Intro-level container knowledge: Containerization fundamentals (build, run, logs, networking)
- Problem-solving mindset and ability to work independently
- English fluency
Nice-to-Have
- Exposure to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or OVH
- Hands-on with S3-compatible storage (OBS, MinIO, etc.)
- Understanding of monitoring/observability basics (metrics vs logs, dashboards, thresholds, alerts)
- Experience with software firewall applications
- Cloud certifications (OTC, AWS CCP, Azure AZ900),
- Pet-project
Package Description
- Competitive Salary
- Great career opportunities
- Corporate Benefits Package
- Relocation support
- International environment
- Possible hybrid work