DevOps Engineer

Job Description

Type: Full-time contractor (hours negotiable)
Location: Remote - Africa/Europe time zones (strong preference for candidates based in Africa)

OpenFn is the digital public good for public service automation & AI orchestration. Our platform automates data exchange and digital workflows so that governments and NGOs can deliver public services more efficiently, achieve interoperability across fragmented systems, and scale critical public services across health, humanitarian, and government programs.

Our team, Open Function Group, the primary steward of this open-source platform, is a lean, fully-remote team of integration specialists, solution architects, and implementation consultants working across 40+ countries.

We are not making marginal improvements to already comfortable lives. We are building the infrastructure that allows governments to function, clinics to operate, and vulnerable populations to access services they depend on.

The role

We are hiring a DevOps Engineer to own the deployment, infrastructure, and operational reliability of OpenFn across our implementation portfolio.

The primary focus of this role is on-premise and local infrastructure deployments for government clients. Many of the governments and ministries we work with operate under strict data sovereignty requirements, limited connectivity/offline restrictions, or IT environments that are far from cloud-native. Getting OpenFn running reliably in those environments, and keeping it running, is a meaningful technical challenge and a critical part of what we deliver. You will own that.

Secondarily, you will support and optimize cloud-hosted OpenFn deployments, primarily on GCP and AWS, and occasionally Azure, working with our services team to ensure those environments are well-configured, cost-efficient, and production-ready.

This is a hands-on role. You will work directly with government IT counterparts, guide our implementation engineers on infrastructure decisions, and build the internal standards and tooling that allow OpenFn to be deployed consistently and confidently across a wide range of environments.

What you’ll be doing

Build World-Class Deployment, Monitoring, and Instance-Maintenance Tooling

• Develop and maintain devops tooling (ansible, terraform, custom CLI programs), deployment runbooks, configuration templates, and documentation that allow the teams and people (such as yourself!) responsible for deploying, monitoring, and maintaining instances of OpenFn to succeed
  

Deliver On-Premise and Local Deployments

• Lead and execute OpenFn deployments on government and ministry-managed infrastructure, including air-gapped, low-connectivity, and sovereign-hosting environments
• Configure and maintain containerized deployments using Docker, Docker Compose, and Docker Swarm, and support Kubernetes-based setups where applicable
• Work directly with government IT teams to navigate local infrastructure constraints, security requirements, and network configurations
• Troubleshoot infrastructure and runtime issues in the field, often with limited access to external resources
  

Cloud Infrastructure

• Maintain and optimize OpenFn deployments on GCP, AWS, and occasionally Azure, including compute, networking, storage, and managed services configuration
• Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines for services team deployments
• Monitor system performance, set up alerting, and respond to infrastructure incidents across cloud-hosted client environments
• Advise implementation teams on cloud architecture decisions and cost optimization
  

Internal Standards and Enablement

• Build and maintain internal DevOps standards, deployment guides, and infrastructure-as-code templates that the wider services team can use and build on
• Contribute to pre-sales and scoping conversations by advising on infrastructure feasibility, hosting options, and deployment effort for prospective clients
• Work closely with the Principal Solutions Architect and the CTO to ensure deployment strategy is aligned with solution architecture from the start of each engagement

Requirements

Desired Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in DevOps, infrastructure, or SRE roles, with a track record across both cloud and on-prem environments.
• Strong hands-on experience with Docker and containerization; experience with Docker Compose in production is essential
• Solid experience with at least one major cloud provider, GCP & AWS strongly preferred, with working knowledge of Azure
• Experience deploying and maintaining applications on on-premise or sovereign-hosting infrastructure, ideally in government, healthcare, or similarly regulated environments
• Proficiency with CI/CD tools and pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or similar)
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or Ansible
• Strong Linux systems administration skills, including networking, storage, and security hardening
• Excellent written and verbal English communication, including the ability to work directly with government IT counterparts who may have limited exposure to modern DevOps practices
• Ability to work from home or a shared office space with fast, stable internet, preferably in a country that is located in Africa/Europe time zones
  

Strong advantage:

• Experience with Kubernetes in production environments
• Familiarity with system monitoring and observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, or similar)
• Background working with NGO technology teams, government digital transformation programs, or digital public goods deployments in Africa or Asia
• Working proficiency in French or Spanish

Benefits

Financial compensation is commensurate with experience.
N.B.: Selling to NGO and government customers, we don’t offer Silicon Valley pay scales, but high quality of life and fair, transparent, and competitive compensation is important to us.

Flexible working schedule.

We’re fully remote, with team meetups across Europe and Africa (our last three were in Kigali, Cape Town, and Dakar). 

Exposure to hottest industry and technology trends and leading health and humanitarian interventions in the sector.

Opportunity for leadership and advancement. You will be a key contributor to our company’s strategy and direction. 

The opportunity to shape our strategy and impact millions of lives through our open source software in a small, mission-driven organization.