Devops & Platform Engineer

Lunate; Abu Dhabi; On-site; AED 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Lunate is seeking a Senior Lead DevOps / SRE Engineer to own architecture delivery into production across our Azure estate. This hands-on role requires decomposing complex designs and landing secure, reliable platforms.

You will lead AKS platform engineering, manage IaC with Terraform and Ansible, build CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps, and establish SRE practices that keep our systems fast, observable, and resilient.

Qualifications

• 7 to 12 or more years of experience in DevOps, Platform, or SRE roles.
• Demonstrated ability to design complex systems or take a defined architecture and deliver it end-to-end into production with operational readiness.
• Strong hands-on experience operating and troubleshooting AKS in production, including upgrades, scaling, and security hardening.
• Strong experience with Docker and container tooling, including image build and optimisation, container registry management, vulnerability scanning, and Helm-based packaging.
• Expert-level experience with Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and lifecycle management.
• Strong experience with Ansible for configuration management and automation, including integration into CI/CD pipelines.
• Expert-level Azure DevOps pipeline engineering and release practices.
• Strong scripting skills in Python, Bash, and PowerShell with an automation-first mindset.
• Strong operational experience across both Linux and Windows Server estates.
• Operational excellence experience covering monitoring and observability, incident response, postmortems, and SLO-driven decisioning.
• Experience with a mature observability stack across metrics, logs, and traces, including alert tuning at scale.
• Experience delivering in regulated environments where traceability and change governance are required, including release evidence, approvals, and segregation-of-duties patterns.
• Relevant certifications such as Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate, or Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert.

Responsibilities

• Translate reference architectures into production platforms with security and runtime considerations.
• Own end-to-end delivery of complex platform changes through design decomposition, implementation planning, engineering execution, and operational handover.
• Design, implement, and operate AKS clusters including upgrades, scaling, node pool strategy, cluster hardening, workload isolation, and performance optimisation.
• Build and maintain IaC frameworks using Terraform for provisioning and Ansible for configuration management.
• Create reusable modules, roles, and playbooks; enforce coding standards; manage drift; and integrate IaC into CI/CD workflows for controlled promotion across environments.
• Deliver end-to-end automation from infrastructure provisioning through post-provision configuration and hardening.
• Design and implement multi-stage Azure DevOps pipelines, deployment strategies, approval gates, artifact management, and rollback patterns.
• Standardise pipelines through reusable templates and documented patterns to improve quality, repeatability, and auditability.
• Own the release management operating model, including release planning, change control alignment, release communications, promotion sequencing, verification, and rollback readiness.
• Use reliability signals and operational readiness criteria to govern release confidence and reduce deployment risk.
• Develop automation and tooling in Python, Bash, and PowerShell to reduce operational toil and improve repeatability across build, deploy, monitoring, and incident response workflows.
• Operate and troubleshoot Linux and Windows Server environments.
• Define and operationalise SLIs, SLOs, and error budget policies to balance delivery velocity with service reliability.
• Lead incident response, establish runbooks, and drive blameless postmortems with measurable actions to reduce recurrence.

Skills

DevOps leadership

End-to-end delivery

AKS in production

Docker and container tooling

Terraform

Ansible

Azure DevOps

Python

Bash

PowerShell

Linux

Windows Server

Observability & SRE

Incident response

regulated environments

Tools

AKS

Terraform

Ansible

Azure DevOps

Helm

Docker

OCI runtimes

Job description

Firm Overview

Lunate is a new Abu Dhabi-based, Partner-led, independent global alternative investment manager with more than 200 employees and $115 billion of assets under management. Lunate invests across the entire private markets spectrum including buyouts, growth equity, early and late-stage venture capital, private credit, real assets, and public equities and public credit. Lunate aims to be one of the world’s leading private markets solutions providers through SMAs and multi‑asset class funds, seeking to generate best‑in‑class risk‑adjusted returns for its clients.

Role Overview

Lunate is seeking a Senior Lead DevOps / SRE Engineer to take ownership of how architecture is delivered into production across our Azure estate. This is a hands‑on technical role for someone who can decompose complex solution designs and land them as secure, reliable, production‑grade platforms.

The successful candidate will lead Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) platform engineering, own Infrastructure as Code delivery using Terraform and Ansible, engineer Azure DevOps CI/CD pipelines, and establish the release management and Site Reliability Engineering practices that keep Lunate’s platforms fast, safe, and observable.

The role sits within the Technology Architecture function and works closely with cloud engineering, infrastructure engineering, security, and application teams.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture Delivery

Translate reference architectures and solution designs into implementable, production‑ready platforms, covering security, networking, identity, and runtime considerations. Own end‑to‑end delivery of complex platform changes through design decomposition, implementation planning, engineering execution, and operational handover. Drive technical trade‑offs across reliability, security, performance, and maintainability.

AKS Platform Engineering and Operations

Design, implement, and operate AKS clusters including upgrades, scaling, node pool strategy, cluster hardening, workload isolation, and performance optimisation. Troubleshoot complex issues spanning Kubernetes, networking, identity integration, and underlying infrastructure, with a bias toward root‑cause resolution and automation.

Infrastructure as Code (Terraform and Ansible)

Build and maintain IaC frameworks using Terraform for provisioning and Ansible for configuration management. Create reusable modules, roles, and playbooks; enforce coding standards; manage drift; and integrate IaC into CI/CD workflows for controlled promotion across environments. Deliver end‑to‑end automation from infrastructure provisioning through post‑provision configuration and hardening.

CI/CD Engineering (Azure DevOps)

Design and implement multi‑stage Azure DevOps pipelines, deployment strategies, approval gates, artifact management, and rollback patterns. Standardise pipelines through reusable templates and documented patterns to improve quality, repeatability, and auditability.

Release Management

Own the release management operating model, including release planning, change control alignment, release communications, promotion sequencing, verification, and rollback readiness. Use reliability signals and operational readiness criteria to govern release confidence and reduce deployment risk.

Automation and Scripting

Develop automation and tooling in Python, Bash, and PowerShell to reduce operational toil and improve repeatability across build, deploy, monitoring, and incident response workflows.

Linux and Windows Server Engineering

Operate and troubleshoot both Linux and Windows Server environments supporting application and platform workloads, applying consistent configuration and hardening practices across both estates.

Site Reliability Engineering

Define and operationalise SLIs, SLOs, and error budget policies to balance delivery velocity with service reliability. Lead incident response, establish runbooks, and drive blameless postmortems with measurable actions to reduce recurrence.

Technical Systems and Tooling

Cloud and Orchestration

Microsoft Azure, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), Azure networking and identity services.

Containerisation

Docker (image build, multi‑stage builds, Dockerfile authoring), container registries (Azure Container Registry), image signing and vulnerability scanning, OCI‑compliant runtimes, and Helm for Kubernetes application packaging.

Infrastructure as Code and Configuration Management

Terraform (infrastructure provisioning and lifecycle management), Ansible (configuration management, roles, and playbooks).

CI/CD and Release Tooling

Azure DevOps (multi‑stage pipelines, pipeline templates, artifact management, approval gates, deployment strategies, rollback patterns).

Scripting and Automation

Python, Bash, PowerShell.

Operating Systems

Linux (enterprise distributions) and Windows Server.

Observability, Reliability, and Operations

Monitoring and observability tooling spanning metrics, logs, and traces; alerting and alert tuning; incident response tooling and runbooks; SLI/SLO instrumentation and error budget reporting.

Essential Skills and Experience

• 7 to 12 or more years of experience in DevOps, Platform, or SRE roles, including demonstrated ownership of large‑scale implementations and platform outcomes.
• Demonstrated ability to design complex systems or take a defined architecture and deliver it end‑to‑end into production with operational readiness.
• Strong hands‑on experience operating and troubleshooting AKS in production, including upgrades, scaling, and security hardening.
• Strong experience with Docker and container tooling, including image build and optimisation, container registry management, vulnerability scanning, and Helm‑based application packaging.
• Expert‑level experience with Terraform for infrastructure provisioning and lifecycle management.
• Strong experience with Ansible for configuration management and automation, including integration into CI/CD pipelines.
• Expert‑level Azure DevOps pipeline engineering and release practices.
• Strong scripting skills in Python, Bash, and PowerShell with an automation‑first mindset.
• Strong operational experience across both Linux and Windows Server estates.
• Operational excellence experience covering monitoring and observability, incident response, postmortems, and SLO‑driven decisioning.
• Experience with a mature observability stack across metrics, logs, and traces, including alert tuning at scale.
• Experience delivering in regulated environments where traceability and change governance are required, including release evidence, approvals, and segregation‑of‑duties patterns.
• Relevant certifications such as Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate, or Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert.