Mid-Level DevOps Engineer (Production Infrastructure

About the Role

We're looking for a Mid-Level DevOps Engineer with hands-on production experience to review, improve, and productionize our deployment infrastructure.

Our current technology stack: Backend: FastAPI · Frontend: Next.js · Database: MySQL · Cloud: DigitalOcean · Containerization: Docker · CI/CD: GitHub Actions

Much of the initial infrastructure is already in place. Your role is to validate the architecture, identify weaknesses, improve reliability, strengthen security, and ensure our platform is production-ready. You'll take ownership of our production infrastructure, including deployment workflows, monitoring, scalability planning, operational security, documentation, and knowledge transfer.

This engagement will initially be project-based, with the opportunity to transition into a part-time or full-time role based on performance, project needs, and company growth.

Responsibilities

Review and improve the existing production infrastructure
Audit and optimize Docker configurations and containerized deployments
Review, improve, and maintain GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines
Configure and maintain production monitoring, logging, and alerting (Prometheus, Grafana)
Configure and optimize reverse proxies (Nginx or Caddy), HTTPS, SSL/TLS, DNS, and networking
Configure and manage CDN services (e.g., Cloudflare) and caching strategies where appropriate
Review and improve infrastructure security, firewall rules, secrets management, and server hardening
Validate backup and disaster recovery procedures
Design and improve deployment strategies that minimize downtime and operational risk
Review infrastructure readiness for ~500–1,000 concurrent users, with a clear path toward 10,000+
Troubleshoot production i ---------- and recommend long-term improvements
Produce infrastructure documentation, operational runbooks, and handover documentation

Required Qualifications

We're specifically looking for candidates with real production experience — not personal projects or tutorial deployments.

3+ years of DevOps, Platform Engineering, or SRE experience
Experience deploying and operating customer-facing production applications
Strong Linux administration; Docker in production
CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, or similar)
Reverse proxies (Nginx/Caddy); HTTPS, SSL/TLS, DNS, networking fundamentals
CDN platforms (Cloudflare, CloudFront, Fastly, or equivalent)
Cloud infrastructure (DigitalOcean, AWS, Azure, or GCP)
Monitoring/observability (Prometheus, Grafana, Loki, ELK/OpenSearch, or equivalent)
Production troubleshooting, i ---------- response, infrastructure security, server hardening
Scalability planning, performance optimization, technical documentation

Preferred Qualifications

Zero/minimal-downtime deployments · high-availability architecture · load balancing · Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Pulumi) · Redis/application caching · message queues (RabbitMQ, Kafka, SQS) · production database optimization · disaster recovery planning · performance testing and capacity planning

What We're Looking For

Someone who understands production engineering principles, not just how to deploy an application. We value engineers who can explain why they make operational decisions, not just how to execute commands.

HOW TO APPLY — read carefully, applications that skip this will not be considered:

Start the FIRST LINE of your application with the word ORBIT.

Then answer these three questions in your own words (no AI-generated answers — we will verify everything in a live screen-share interview):

Describe one production i ---------- you personally handled: what broke, how you diagnosed it, and what you changed afterwards.
When did you last test-restore a database backup, and how did you verify the restored data was correct?
Link to something that proves your work: a CI/CD workflow file you wrote, a live application you operate, or an architecture/runbook sample (redacted is fine).

Applications consisting only of a generic CV or a restated version of this job post will be rejected.