Senior DevOps Engineer

Polarsteps; Amsterdam; Hybrid; EUR 84,000 - 99,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid working

MacBook provided

30 days vacation

Pension plan

Equity SAR Plan

Annual travel benefit

Office in Amsterdam

Job summary

Polarsteps, an Amsterdam-based travel platform, seeks a DevOps Engineer to own the day-to-day operations of our AWS stack and support all engineering teams. You will keep infrastructure reliable, scalable and secure, while refining deployment, observability and incident response.

You’ll collaborate with Platform and engineering leads to automate, improve tooling, and drive best practices, with a hybrid work setup and ample opportunities for personal growth.

Qualifications

• 5+ years as a DevOps Engineer, SRE or Platform Engineer.
• Experience automating infrastructure and processes on AWS.
• Fluency in shell scripting, Python and Terraform / OpenTofu.
• Experience monitoring, troubleshooting and scaling a similar stack (Python, PostgreSQL/RDS) under growing load.
• Comfort making changes to backend code when automation calls for it.
• A pragmatic mindset: you know when to cut corners and when to build something that lasts.
• Clear communication with technical and non-technical people, helping them reach decisions on complex trade-offs.
• Autonomy and a collaborative nature. You're happy setting up your own processes while working with everyone.
• Knowledgeable of platform security best practices.

Responsibilities

• Own the day-to-day operations of our AWS stack, including S3 and PostgreSQL databases.
• Spot bottlenecks in architecture and scaling; create and execute a plan with Engineering and stakeholders.
• Review, improve and maintain observability, monitoring and alerting.
• Manage and respond to incidents, and keep infrastructure and troubleshooting docs up to date.
• Strengthen platform security and privacy alongside the external security lead.
• Lead initiatives like rolling out company-wide SSO and managing our VPN.
• Support the Data team with the infrastructure behind our analytics stack.

Skills

AWS automation

Shell scripting

Python

Terraform/OpenTofu

Observability/Monitoring

Incident management

Security best practices

Communication

Autonomy & collaboration

Backend code changes

Tools

Kubernetes

ArgoCD

ECS

Nix

RabbitMQ

Traces/observability tooling

Job description

We're an Amsterdam-based team of 100 (and counting), with 25+ nationalities and hundreds of thousands of kilometers under our collective travel belts. What we have in common, beyond very well-worn passports, is this: We want to change the way people travel. That's exactly what we're doing, with the app that lets you plan, track, and relive every trip. Polarsteps has over 20 million users already. For us, this is just the beginning.

Your expedition: DevOps at Polarsteps

One person, the whole platform.

Polarsteps helps 23+ million travellers plan, track and relive their trips, and all of it runs on our infrastructure. As our DevOps Engineer, you'll be the main point of contact for that infrastructure. You'll work alongside our Platform team and support all 8 of our engineering teams, so everyone can ship with confidence.

There's plenty of room to bring your own ideas and improve how we work, with a supportive team around you to figure things out together. If you enjoy being hands-on, setting up good processes and helping others make the right technical choices, this is your kind of adventure.

Our ambition is big. We want our infrastructure ready for 100 million+ users, built efficiently in both cost and resources.

Your itinerary

What your journey at Polarsteps will look like day-to-day:

You will:

• Report to Simeon, our Lead Backend Engineer, and work closely with our Platform team (Youri, William, Paco, Jimmy, Florian and Ledio) and team leads across Engineering.
• Own the day-to-day operations of our AWS stack, including S3 and our PostgreSQL databases.
• Spot bottlenecks in our architecture and scaling, both for users and for developer experience. You'll create and execute a plan with Engineering and other stakeholders.
• Review, improve and maintain our observability, monitoring and alerting.
• Manage and respond to incidents, and keep our infrastructure and troubleshooting documentation up to date.
• Strengthen platform security and privacy, working alongside our external security lead.
• Lead initiatives like rolling out company-wide SSO and managing our VPN.
• Support our Data team with the infrastructure behind our analytics stack.

The equipment in your backpack

What we're hoping you'll bring with you:

• 5+ years as a DevOps Engineer, SRE or Platform Engineer.
• Experience automating infrastructure and processes on AWS.
• Fluency in shell scripting, Python and Terraform / OpenTofu.
• Experience monitoring, troubleshooting and scaling a similar stack (Python, PostgreSQL/RDS) under growing load.
• Comfort making changes to backend code when automation calls for it.
• A pragmatic mindset: you know when to cut corners and when to build something that lasts.
• Clear communication with technical and non-technical people, helping them reach decisions on complex trade-offs.
• Autonomy and a collaborative nature. You're happy setting up your own processes while working with everyone.
• Knowledgeable of platform security best practices.

Bonus points if you've worked with Nix, Kubernetes, ArgoCD or ECS, RabbitMQ, or TypeScript on the frontend

1st class extras

Some cool things to make the journey extra sweet.

• Salary range: Between EUR 84.000 and 99.000 gross per year incl 8% holiday allowance (based on 40 hours/week). Where you land in the range depends on your experience and skills, to be evaluated during the interview process.
• Equity: You'll be able to participate in our Polarsteps SAR Plan.
• A yearly free flight or train to a random location! Give our Teleporter a spin here.
• A shiny new MacBook to work your magic on.
• Hybrid working. Split your time between the office and your home, as you see fit.
• An extensive home office set-up — everything from noise-canceling headphones to a standing desk.
• 30 days of vacation (for adventures or sitting on the couch, it's up to you).
• Two paid Culture Days for days that are important to you, but not recognized by the official Dutch calendar.
• The option to switch up your zoom background by working from another country for up to 8 weeks a year.
• A personal development budget for that curious mind of yours!
• A pension plan to help you save for those around-the-world retirement trips.
• Delicious daily office lunches.
• Awesome monthly parties, as well as team trips away.
• A lively office in downtown Amsterdam, with travel costs reimbursed.
• Free Polarsteps Travel Books to contain all your far-flung adventures.

At Polarsteps, we believe the best products are built by people as diverse as the travelers using our apps! That's why we specifically encourage people underrepresented in the tech industry to apply for a role with us. Because we believe that diversity — be it age, race, sexual orientation, physical ability, ethnicity, or gender identity — makes both the world and the workplace better.