OpenShift Platform Lead

Formus Professional Software LLC; United Kingdom; Hybrid; GBP 110,000 - 150,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Personal development & training

Pension contributions

Death in Service Cover

Income Protection

20 days holiday + 5 lifestyle days

Job summary

FormusPro is seeking an OpenShift Platform Lead to own the OpenShift-based virtualization platform, driving design, BAU operations, upgrades and incident response. You will lead SRE collaboration, enable seamless VM migrations from legacy infrastructure, and balance operational excellence with strategic platform evolution.

This is a hands-on leadership role requiring deep OpenShift expertise, with a hybrid work arrangement in the United Kingdom.

Qualifications

• 8–12 years in IT infrastructure or equivalent roles.
• 5+ years hands-on with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (4.x).
• 3+ years OpenShift Virtualization (KubeVirt) or similar VM hosting.
• 3+ years in platform/infrastructure leadership roles.
• 2+ years with RHEL and RHCOS.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy and roadmap for the OpenShift Virtualization platform.
• Lead platform lifecycle, upgrades, and patching with minimal downtime.
• Drive stability, performance, and security governance.
• Coordinate with SRE and operations; enable VM migrations from legacy infra.
• Oversee change management, incident response, and RCA processes.
• Mentor teams and drive IaC and GitOps adoption.

Skills

OpenShift Platform

OpenShift Virtualization

OpenShift 4.x

Linux Admin

Ansible

Terraform

GitOps

Networking OVN

Ceph/ODF

Incident Mgmt

RHEL/RHCOS

Tools

Ansible

Terraform

Kubernetes

ArgoCD

Flux

Job description

FormusPro offers awesome career opportunities in software engineering, data science and much, much more.

United Kingdom

Hybrid

Full Time

Infrastructure

We are seeking an experienced OpenShift Platform Lead to own and manage our OpenShift-based virtualization platform that delivers enterprise VM hosting services. This role is responsible for the complete lifecycle management of the platform, including design, architecture, BAU operations, patching, upgrades, incident response, and driving platform stability.

You will lead the implementation, work closely with SRE and operations teams, and enable seamless VM migration from legacy infrastructure. This is a hands‑on technical leadership role requiring deep OpenShift expertise and the ability to balance operational excellence with strategic platform evolution.

This is a full-time hybrid-based role.

To be successful in the role, you will need to be a good team player with excellent communication skills, have the ability to manage your own workload, and work well on your own initiative and under direction.

Key Responsibilities

Platform Leadership & Strategy

• Own the technical strategy and roadmap for the OpenShift Virtualization platform
• Define platform architecture, design patterns, and technical standards
• Lead platform lifecycle management including major/minor upgrades and Red Hat CoreOS updates
• Drive platform stability improvements and performance optimization initiatives
• Establish platform governance, compliance, and security policies
• Build relationships with Red Hat support and leverage Technical Account Management (TAM)

Lifecycle & Operations Management

• Manage complete platform lifecycle from installation through upgrades to decommissioning
• Plan and execute OpenShift platform upgrades (4.x releases) with zero/minimal downtime
• Coordinate quarterly/monthly Red Hat CoreOS (RHCOS) patching cycles
• Oversee OpenShift Virtualization operator upgrades and feature enablement
• Maintain platform health through proactive monitoring and capacity planning
• Ensure platform meets defined SLAs and availability targets (99.9%+)
• Lead Major Incident response for platform-level issues (Sev 1/2)
• Perform root cause analysis (RCA) and implement preventive measures
• Collaborate with SRE team on incident postmortems and improvement plans
• Manage platform-related events including maintenance windows
• Coordinate emergency changes and rollback procedures
• Participate in on-call rotation for critical platform escalations

Change Implementation & Release Management

• Review and approve platform changes through Change Advisory Board (CAB)
• Plan and execute complex platform changes with risk assessment
• Implement infrastructure-as-code (IaC) practices using Ansible and Terraform
• Drive GitOps adoption for platform configuration management
• Coordinate release windows for platform updates with business stakeholders
• Ensure change documentation and runbook accuracy
• Lead VM migration strategy from VMware/legacy platforms to OpenShift Virtualization
• Design VM migration runbooks and automation workflows
• Create and maintain VM templates, golden images, and standardized configurations
• Enable application teams for self-service VM provisioning
• Troubleshoot VM performance, networking, and storage issues
• Optimize VM placement, resource allocation, and cluster balancing

Platform Stability & Performance

• Define and monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) for platform health
• Tune OpenShift control plane and worker node performance
• Optimize storage performance (ODF/Ceph) for VM workloads
• Configure network policies and OVN-Kubernetes for optimal VM networking
• Drive continuous improvement initiatives based on operational metrics

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

Must-Have Skills & Experience

Experience Requirements:

• 8-12 years of overall IT infrastructure experience
• 5+ years of hands‑on experience with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (4.x)
• 3+ years of experience with OpenShift Virtualization (KubeVirt) or similar VM hosting platforms
• 3+ years of experience in platform/infrastructure leadership roles
• 2+ years of experience with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL 7/8/9) and Red Hat CoreOS (RHCOS)

Technical Skills:

• Advanced OpenShift Virtualization knowledge (VMs, DataVolumes, CDI, live migration)
• Advanced Red Hat CoreOS and Machine Config Operator (MCO) experience
• Advanced Linux administration and troubleshooting (RHEL-based)
• Advanced storage management (ODF/Ceph, Storage Classes, PV/PVC, CSI drivers)
• Advanced networking (OVN-Kubernetes, Multus, Network Policies, SDN concepts)
• Advanced automation skills (Ansible, Bash scripting, Python)
• Intermediate Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, GitOps tools like ArgoCD/Flux)
• Intermediate observability platforms (Prometheus, Grafana, AlertManager)

Platform Operations:

• Proven experience managing platform lifecycle (installation, upgrades, patching)
• Strong incident management and major incident response experience
• Experience with change management processes and release coordination
• Demonstrated ability to perform root cause analysis and implement preventive measures
• Experience with capacity planning and performance tuning
• Track record of driving platform stability improvements

Certifications Required (one or more):

• Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Administration

Highly Desirable:

• Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) certification
• Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Virtualization
• Experience with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management (RHACM)
• Experience with Red Hat Advanced Cluster Security (RHACS/Stackrox)
• Experience with OpenShift on multiple infrastructures (bare metal, VMware, AWS, Azure)

Nice to Have:

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or CKS
• Experience with multi-tenancy and namespace isolation strategies
• Knowledge of compliance frameworks (PCI-DSS, HIPAA, SOC2, ISO 27001)
• Experience with backup solutions (Kasten K10, Veeam, Commvault)
• Programming skills in Go, Python, or Java
• Experience with hybrid/multi-cloud architectures

Key Success Metrics

• Successful upgrade completion rate: 100% with zero unplanned rollbacks
• Incident MTTR: < 2 hours for Sev 1/2 incidents
• VM migration velocity: Target VMs per month with <5% issues
• Platform capacity utilization: 70-80% optimal range
• Change success rate: >98% first-time success
• Some evening/weekend work required for maintenance windows
• Available 24 x7 during major issues

Ready To Join The Team?

In addition to the competitive salary, you will also be entitled to the following benefits:

• Time allocated for personal development and training
• Pension contributions
• Death in Service Cover
• Income Protection
• 20 days holiday per annum, plus 5 lifestyle days and the option to buy additional days
• Access to well being and legal assistance 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
• Access to multiple offerings including supermarket savings, discounted days out, the daily coffee or a summer holiday – there’s something to suit everyone’s lifestyle
• Company social events throughout the year
• Access to an electric vehicle scheme
• Access to private medical insurance

Empower. Impact. Change.

That’s our motto, and we mean it. Our focus is helping our clients solve problems with Microsoft technology that enables them to achieve their goals. We’re a technical bunch (and proud of it). That combination of how we partner with our clients and our technical DNA has created an environment that allows our team to thrive.