DevOps Engineers (AIOps) - API and Kubernetes

Role Overview

The DevOps Engineer owns the AWA platform's deployment, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and operational reliability. You ensure that every AWA component - from AKS namespaces and KEDA autoscalers to ADLS Gen2 lifecycle policies and Azure Firewall allowlists - is deployed consistently, tested automatically, and operated reliably within THE BANK's Azure UAE environment. You are the guardian of the AWA infrastructure: nothing is deployed manually; everything is reproducible from code.

Key Responsibilities

Infrastructure as code: Own and maintain all AWA Azure infrastructure in Terraform/Bicep: AKS 5-namespace cluster, ADLS Gen2 accounts with WORM policies, Azure AI Foundry APIM configurations, Azure Firewall allowlists, private endpoints, Key Vault, Container Registry, ExpressRoute peering.

CI/CD pipeline ownership: Design and maintain Azure DevOps pipelines for all AWA components: container image build ACR push Notary v2 signing AKS deployment; Terraform plan policy check apply; Agent Regression Testing gate on every PR.

AKS operations: Manage the 5-namespace AKS cluster - namespace isolation, Network Policies, Pod Disruption Budgets, KEDA autoscaling rules based on Kafka consumer lag, OPA Gatekeeper admission policies, Workload Identity bindings for all agent pods.

Container governance: Manage ACR, enforce Notary v2 image signing, configure vulnerability scanning, maintain the approved-image ConfigMap used by OPA Gatekeeper admission control.

Secret and certificate management: Own Azure Key Vault configuration - access policies per managed identity, automatic TLS certificate rotation, secret rotation schedules, audit of all secret access events.

Monitoring and alerting: Configure Azure Monitor alert rules and Log Analytics KQL queries for SLA breach, error rate spike, pod crash loop, token budget breach, and Kafka consumer lag; maintain PagerDuty escalation paths.

Security posture: Work with the AI Security Engineer to implement Azure Policy assignments, Defender for Cloud recommendations, Firewall rule reviews, and Private Endpoint configurations; maintain the AWA network topology diagram.

Disaster recovery: Maintain and test DR procedures: failover to UAE South replica for ADLS Gen2, Azure AI Foundry PTU PAYG DR endpoint routing, Orkes cluster recovery, RTO/RPO validation.

Required Skills and Experience

Technical - Essential

5+ years DevOps/Platform Engineering; 2+ years on Azure

Terraform or Bicep - production IaC, not just templates

Kubernetes / AKS: namespaces, RBAC, Network Policies, Helm charts, Kustomize

Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions - multi-stage pipelines, approvals, environments

Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, KQL query language

Container ecosystem: Docker, ACR, image signing, admission control

Azure networking: VNet, private endpoints, NSGs, Azure Firewall, ExpressRoute concepts

KEDA (Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling) or equivalent autoscaling experience

Technical - Advantageous

Azure Key Vault, managed identity, Workload Identity for Kubernetes

OPA Gatekeeper or Kyverno for Kubernetes policy enforcement

Kafka / Azure Event Hubs - consumer group management, lag monitoring

ADLS Gen2, WORM immutable storage, lifecycle management policies

Azure AI Foundry / APIM - token quotas, rate limiting, backend routing configuration

Security tooling: Defender for Cloud, Sentinel, Notary v2

Skills: Terraform , Kubernetes , Azure DevOps