Principal DevOps Engineer

About the role

Softgic is looking for an experienced Principal DevOps Engineer in Nairobi to provide technical leadership and contribute to the architecture, automation, deployment and operation of cloud-based software products. This is a highly technical role in an Agile engineering environment, working closely with Development, QA, Operations, Architecture and Product Management teams, helping define and implement scalable cloud infrastructure, modern DevOps practices, automated deployment and reliable CI/CD solutions.

Key responsibilities

• Take part in cloud architecture, infrastructure design and software development initiatives, and lead the engineering teams in solving complex infrastructure, security, scalability and deployment challenges.
• Design, build, maintain and optimise cloud infrastructure mainly on AWS, using services such as EC2, VPC, S3, ELB, RDS, Route 53, WorkSpaces, CloudWatch and CloudTrail.
• Implement infrastructure as code with Terraform and CloudFormation, and build automated CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins and GitHub.
• Automate application and infrastructure deployment, manage containerised environments (Docker, Kubernetes, ECS) and use Chef or Puppet for configuration management.
• Manage cloud administration, deploy application modules, platform upgrades and production fixes, and run incremental testing of code, infrastructure and deployments.
• Support configuration, troubleshooting and documentation, and implement monitoring and operational visibility with CloudWatch and CloudTrail.
• Develop custom automation and workflows with scripting and programming languages, and promote DevOps best practices across engineering teams.

Required profile

• 12+ years of relevant DevOps, Cloud Engineering, Platform Engineering, SRE or Infrastructure Engineering experience.
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Technology, Computer Science or a related discipline, or equivalent professional experience.
• Strong troubleshooting and problem-solving skills, and experience in Agile software development teams.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across Development, QA, Operations, Product and Architecture teams.

Required skills

• Deep expertise with AWS and its services; strong IaC with Terraform and/or CloudFormation.
• CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins and GitHub or comparable tools.
• Docker, Kubernetes, ECS and configuration management tools such as Chef or Puppet.
• Scripting or programming languages for automation, and cloud infrastructure administration.
• Preferred: previous experience in PEO, HCM, SaaS, IT or ITES environments, and experience with both AWS and Microsoft Azure.