Senior Developer

Senior Developer – Platform Engineering Self Employed position- 1 year initial contract plus extensions Ideal start date: March 2026 Hybrid Brussels Role Overview We are seeking a Senior Developer to design, build, and operate key components of a secure and scalable enterprise-grade platform. You will work within the Platform Engineering team to deliver and maintain core services that enable air traffic management (ATM) applications to run securely, reliably, and efficiently across OpenShift, Azure IaaS, and associated ecosystems. This role requires strong technical expertise, a passion for automation, and a focus on security, reliability, and observability in compliance with our operational and regulatory standards.

Key Responsibilities

1. Platform Development & Automation Develop, test, and maintain Kubernetes and OpenShift-based platform components and custom operators. Build and enhance CI/CD pipelines using Jenkins, applying GitOps best practices for repeatable and traceable deployments. Contribute to infrastructure-as-code (IaC) using Terraform and Ansible to automate the provisioning and configuration of Azure and on-prem resources.

Develop APIs, scripts, and integrations to streamline platform operations and enable self-service capabilities for development teams. 2. Platform Operations & Reliability Deploy and maintain core data services including PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Elasticsearch, and MinIO within OpenShift and Azure environments. Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, and performance tuning of platform components. Contribute to the design and implementation of monitoring, alerting, and logging solutions (ELK Stack, Prometheus, Grafana).

Implement and test backup, failover, and disaster recovery procedures for critical platform services. 3. Security & Integration Implement and maintain identity and access management integrations using Keycloak, Okta, and Vault. Ensure secrets management, policy-as-code, and secure configuration baselines across all deployed components. Configure and manage reverse proxies (NGINX) and API Gateway solutions for secure and reliable service exposure.

Work on data and messaging integration using Solace PubSub+ and Confluent Kafka to support real-time aviation data flows. 4. Collaboration & Continuous Improvement Collaborate with principal developer to translate the designs into implementations. Collaborate with developers, DevOps engineers, and architects to ensure seamless service integration and operational consistency. Spend 15-20% of time to provide support to the product developers who are the customers of the platform.

Contribute to documentation, runbooks, and best practice guidelines for platform use and maintenance. Identify opportunities for automation, optimization, and technical debt reduction. Participate in code reviews, pair programming, and continuous learning initiatives. Required Skills & Experience Technical Expertise 5–8 years of experience in software or platform development, with a strong background in cloud-native and DevOps practices.

Proficient with OpenShift/Kubernetes (Helm, operators, namespaces, RBAC, secrets, networking).

Experience

with Azure IaaS (VMs, networking, storage, IAM). Strong knowledge of CI/CD tools (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD) and IaC tools (Terraform, Ansible).

Experience

managing Vault, Keycloak, or Okta for secure access and identity management. Hands-on experience with databases (PostgreSQL, MongoDB) and data services (Elasticsearch, MinIO). Familiarity with event-driven systems (Solace, Kafka). Strong understanding of Linux, networking, and container orchestration principles.

Soft Skills & Attributes Analytical and methodical approach to problem-solving. Strong communication skills and ability to collaborate within multidisciplinary teams. Commitment to security, quality, and operational resilience in line with aviation system requirements. Curiosity to learn and contribute to cutting-edge platform technologies in a highly regulated domain.

Preferred Qualifications Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or Developer (CKAD). (nice to have) HashiCorp Certified: Vault Associate. (nice to have) Azure Administrator Associate or Azure DevOps certification.