DevOps / Platform Engineer

About the role

Ifkafin Systems is hiring a mid‑level DevOps / Platform Engineer to own the infrastructure our product teams ship on. Ifkafin builds secure software for the financial industry, including web, iOS, Android and workflow automation. We are a small, hands‑on team based in Nairobi and our platform runs on‑premises with Cloudflare as the edge.

Key responsibilities

• Own on‑premises Linux hosts in the Nairobi office, handling patching, users, disks, services and uptime.
• Run and maintain Proxmox hypervisor, including guests, storage, snapshots and networking.
• Provision and operate self‑hosted servers at dedicated/VPS providers such as OVHcloud, Hetzner, Scaleway, Contabo and Leaseweb.
• Manage Cloudflare edge services – DNS, SSL/TLS, proxies, WAF, tunnels, access and caching.
• Configure reverse proxies (Nginx or Traefik) and internal service routing.
• Design network access, firewalls, VPNs and least‑privilege rules for office and hosted environments.
• Deploy and maintain containerised workloads with Docker, Docker Compose and Kubernetes where appropriate.
• Implement infrastructure‑as‑code with Terraform/OpenTofu and make servers repeatable using Ansible or cloud‑init.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions and promote builds through QA, staging and production.
• Instrument monitoring, logging and alerts for uptime, metrics and resource usage.

Required profile

• Mid‑level experience with ownership of production systems.
• Strong Linux administration on on‑premises or self‑hosted servers.
• Hands‑on experience with Docker and containerised workloads.
• Proven ability to design CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or equivalent).
• Practical experience configuring Cloudflare services.
• Experience using Terraform or OpenTofu on real infrastructure.
• Ability to make servers repeatable with Ansible, cloud‑init or similar tools.
• Knowledge of at least one public cloud (GCP, Azure or AWS) and comfort with OVH‑class providers.
• Understanding of security fundamentals – firewalls, TLS, secrets and backups.
• Capability to read, debug and ship JavaScript/TypeScript/Node.js code.

Required skills

• Linux
• Proxmox
• Docker, Docker Compose
• Kubernetes
• Terraform / OpenTofu
• Ansible / cloud‑init
• GitHub Actions
• Cloudflare (DNS, SSL/TLS, WAF, tunnels)
• Nginx / Traefik
• Public cloud platforms (GCP, Azure, AWS)
• OVH, Hetzner, Scaleway, Contabo, Leaseweb
• VPN, firewalls, network routing