Founding Infrastructure Engineer

Praetori; Netherlands; On-site; EUR 90,000 - 130,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Meaningful equity

Performance bonus

Job summary

Praetori in Haarlem, the Netherlands, is seeking a Founding Infrastructure Engineer to build and operate its platform across sovereign cloud, on-premise, and edge environments. You’ll own deployment topologies, CI/CD, security, and observability to ensure reliability in constrained environments.

The role requires hands-on Kubernetes, IaC, and a security-first mindset, with responsibility from design to field deployment, collaborating with forward deployed engineers.

Qualifications

• You can point to production systems you have run, and the reliability and security bar you held them to.
• Deep, hands-on experience running Kubernetes and containerised workloads in production.
• Strong command of infrastructure as code and modern CI/CD. You automate by default.
• Real experience across more than one environment: cloud plus on-premise or edge.
• A security-first mindset and practical experience hardening systems and pipelines.
• Fluency with observability and the instinct to design for failure from the start.
• High ownership. You treat production as sacred. Fluent English.

Responsibilities

• 01 Design and operate Kubernetes deployments across sovereign cloud, on-premise and edge environments.
• 02 Build repeatable, auditable infrastructure as code so any environment can be reproduced with confidence.
• 03 Own CI/CD that lets a small team ship frequently and safely, with fast rollback.
• 04 Engineer for disconnected, air-gapped and bandwidth-constrained edges, not just the cloud path.
• 05 Make security a property of the platform: hardening, secrets, supply-chain integrity, least privilege, auditability.
• 06 Build observability that gives real operational insight, and act on what it shows.
• 07 Define and defend reliability targets. Design for failure and reduce toil through automation.
• 08 Partner with forward deployed engineers to deploy into customer environments and resolve issues in the field.

Skills

Kubernetes

Infrastructure as Code

CI/CD

Security

Observability

Ownership

Job description

DevOps · Platform · Haarlem, the Netherlands · Hybrid

We are looking for an infrastructure engineer who can make our platform deploy anywhere it is needed, from sovereign cloud to the edge, and run where failure is not an option.

Praetori builds Continuous Control Infrastructure: one sovereign software layer that keeps the operational picture, the decision and the action connected while conditions change.

Operations move continuously. Most systems do not. When information fragments across tools and the situation shifts faster than the response, control is lost. Praetori closes that gap, so critical teams understand, decide and act as one, and hold sovereign control when external dependencies fail.

This is not theoretical. Our workflows are shaped around how critical teams actually work, tested against real public-security requirements, and architected for sovereign control from the start. We are in active, confidential engagement with defence and mission-critical organisations under operational pressure.

Our mission is to secure Europe's operational independence.

About the role

Our software has to run where our customers operate, under constraints most software never faces: sovereign environments, on-premise data centres, disconnected edges, strict security regimes, and uptime expectations that treat downtime as an operational failure.

You own how Praetori is built, deployed, secured and observed across every one of those environments. You design deployment topologies that work in the cloud and behind an air gap, build the CI/CD and infrastructure as code that lets a small team ship safely and fast, and make reliability and security properties of the system rather than afterthoughts. You work closely with the core and forward deployed engineers who put Praetori in front of customers.

Within twelve months, Praetori will deploy to sovereign cloud, on-premise and the edge through one process the team trusts, releases will be routine rather than events, and security and sovereignty will be met by design and provable to serious customers.

What you’ll do

• 01 Design and operate Kubernetes deployments across sovereign cloud, on-premise and edge environments.
• 02 Build repeatable, auditable infrastructure as code so any environment can be reproduced with confidence.
• 03 Own CI/CD that lets a small team ship frequently and safely, with fast rollback.
• 04 Engineer for disconnected, air-gapped and bandwidth-constrained edges, not just the cloud path.
• 05 Make security a property of the platform: hardening, secrets, supply-chain integrity, least privilege, auditability.
• 06 Build observability that gives real operational insight, and act on what it shows.
• 07 Define and defend reliability targets. Design for failure and reduce toil through automation.
• 08 Partner with forward deployed engineers to deploy into customer environments and resolve issues in the field.

What we’re looking for

Required

• You can point to production systems you have run, and the reliability and security bar you held them to.
• Deep, hands-on experience running Kubernetes and containerised workloads in production.
• Strong command of infrastructure as code and modern CI/CD. You automate by default.
• Real experience across more than one environment: cloud plus on-premise or edge.
• A security-first mindset and practical experience hardening systems and pipelines.
• Fluency with observability and the instinct to design for failure from the start.
• High ownership. You treat production as sacred. Fluent English.

Preferred

• Experience with air-gapped, sovereign or otherwise restricted deployments.
• Background in defence, government, critical infrastructure or another high-assurance environment.
• Familiarity with edge and hardware-adjacent deployments, networking or real-time systems.
• Experience with supply-chain security or formal accreditation. Eligibility for security clearance.

Europe can no longer assume that the systems its critical organisations depend on will stay available, trusted, or under its own control. Praetori exists to change that. You would help build the sovereign infrastructure that secures Europe's operational independence, from the ground up.

The problems are hard and the ownership is real. You would work alongside the founders and a small, deliberately chosen team, with room to grow as the company does and the rare chance to shape foundational systems before they exist. If you have felt the cost of losing control, this is where you rebuild it.

Our standards

We work with extreme ownership and low ego. We hold a high bar, first for ourselves, and we separate ideas from identity so we can argue hard and decide fast. We favour action over deliberation, say the true thing plainly and early, and put the mission ahead of comfort or hierarchy. Status here is earned by what you build, not your title.

Location Haarlem, the Netherlands · Hybrid

Travel Low; occasional customer-site work

Compensation A market-rate salary, meaningful equity, and a performance bonus.

Eligibility Right to work in the EU. Eligibility for security clearance.

If building infrastructure with real operational consequence matters to you more than comfort, we want to hear from you. If you are unsure whether you meet every point but the mission pulls at you, apply anyway. We hire for capability, not a checklist.

Apply for this role

Founding Infrastructure Engineer · Haarlem, the Netherlands