Kubernetes Engineer – Rancher / RKE2

Oivan Group | IT Services

1h 40m ago

On-site

Full Time

United Arab Emirates

Oivan is looking for an Intermediate Kubernetes Engineer to join our team in Dubai. You will provide on-site operational support for enterprise Kubernetes platforms built on SUSE Rancher and RKE2, keep day-to-day operations running smoothly, and help the customer's team become confident in using and operating Rancher. This role requires:

Strong, practical hands-on experience with Rancher and RKE2
On-site operational support and day-to-day platform activities
Solid Kubernetes troubleshooting and issue resolution skills
Knowledge transfer and technical guidance to the team on Rancher usage and operations

This is a hands-on, customer-facing role. Candidates must be able to show real experience operating Rancher and RKE2 clusters, not only theoretical knowledge. We offer you the opportunity to apply and grow your skills with a diverse and geographically distributed technology team, working directly with customers on mission-critical Kubernetes platforms.
The following are the main duties you will do as part of this job:

Provide on-site operational support for Rancher-managed RKE2 clusters at the customer's premises
Carry out day-to-day operations: cluster health checks, node and workload management, namespace and project administration, and user access through Rancher RBAC
Troubleshoot and resolve platform issues (nodes, pods, networking, DNS, ingress, storage and certificates), and escalate with clear findings when needed
Operate Rancher Manager: managing downstream clusters, projects, users and roles, the app catalog and Helm-based deployments
Support RKE2 cluster installation, configuration, scaling and routine maintenance, including on-premise and air-gapped environments
Assist with planned Kubernetes, RKE2 and Rancher upgrades, and with etcd snapshots and Rancher backup and restore
Monitor platforms using Rancher Monitoring (Prometheus and Grafana) and logging, and respond to alerts and incidents
Apply security baselines such as the RKE2 CIS profile, Pod Security Admission and network policies
Deliver knowledge transfer, hands-on walkthroughs and technical guidance to customer and internal teams on Rancher usage and operations
Create and maintain runbooks, operational procedures and platform documentation
Work closely with customer stakeholders and the wider Oivan and SUSE teams

Qualifications & Skills
Our ideal candidate will fulfill the following requirements:

3+ years of hands-on experience in IT, with 2+ years operating Kubernetes in production
Strong practical experience with Rancher and RKE2:
- Rancher Manager day-2 operations: downstream clusters, projects, RBAC, catalog and apps
- RKE2 server and agent nodes, config.yaml, embedded containerd, etcd and air-gapped installation
Solid Kubernetes troubleshooting skills:
- Debugging with kubectl, events, logs, crictl and node-level tools
- Diagnosing networking, DNS, storage, scheduling and certificate issues
Working knowledge of Helm; exposure to GitOps (Rancher Fleet, Argo CD or Flux) is a plus
Good Linux administration (SLES / SLE Micro, RHEL or Ubuntu) and networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS, load balancing, TLS)
Familiarity with Prometheus, Grafana and centralized logging
Bash scripting; Ansible or Terraform is a plus
Ability to explain technical topics clearly and coach others (knowledge transfer, training, documentation)
Experience working on-site in on-premise enterprise environments
Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
English (advanced); Arabic language skills are an advantage

Desirable

SUSE Virtualization (Harvester), SUSE Storage (Longhorn) and SUSE Security (NeuVector)
CNI knowledge: Canal, Calico or Cilium
Private registries and air-gapped image management (e.g., Harbor)
Backup tooling such as Velero
Exposure to CI/CD tooling (GitLab CI, Jenkins or GitHub Actions)

Preferred Certifications

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
SUSE Rancher certification (Administrator or Deployment Specialist)
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)

Required Skills

kuberneteshelmprometheusgrafanalinux

Required Languages

🇬🇧 English