Cloud Engineer

Job description

Team & Reporting Line: Cloud Infrastructure 

Our Mission  

At constellr, we're harnessing the power of space to solve one of Earth’s greatest challenges: climate resilience & security in a changing world. Our thermal satellite constellation delivers the most accurate land surface temperature data on the market, equipping commercial players, governments, defence agencies, and global institutions with the thermal intelligence they need to make strategic decisions- from national security and infrastructure to agriculture and climate resilience. 

As a fast-scaling company with offices in Brussels, Freiburg, Munich, Washington and Toulouse, our multidisciplinary team of engineers, scientists, and strategists is building the future of space-based Earth observation

Your Role

You'll join our central Infrastructure team to help constellr build and operate the cloud and on-prem infrastructure behind our software systems - the Ground Segment for satellite operations, Data and User Segments, and Space Engineering-related systems, plus (together with IT) our AIT facilities. 

We currently operate platform-style and are largely self-organised, but with a real ops component: we support other teams via tickets, incident response, and bug fixes, and own infrastructure reliability end-to-end. Beyond day-to-day operations, we proactively shape “golden paths” for engineering teams company-wide rather than only reacting to requests. Security and cloud agnosticity are first-class concerns for us - we work toward high standards (e.g., ISO/IEC 27001) and collaborate closely with our Security/Compliance and IT departments, who own dedicated responsibilities in this area. 

We’re hiring at a mid-to-senior level where tenure isn’t the leading indicator, more importantly you are expected to be able to see the bigger picture and weigh trade-offs across systems and teams, proactively surface issues and are comfortable owning topics end-to-end. 

Key responsibilities

• Design and operate infrastructure across multiple cloud providers (currently AWS, expanding to an EU-sovereign provider) plus on-prem/AIT environments, using IaC (Terraform/Terramate) with an eye toward security and portability while avoiding unnecessary vendor lock-in. 

• Take ownership of key systems and topics alongside the team while contributing actively to shared team responsibilities and outcomes, not just your own backlog. 

• Improve the reliability, performance, and scalability of systems deployed in the cloud and on-prem. 

• Manage secrets, encryption, and certificates (SOPS, KMS/HSM equivalents) consistently across cloud and on-prem. 

• Partner with the Security/Compliance department on ISO/EIC 27001 controls, risk assessments, and audits; implement infrastructure controls satisfying security requirements (access control, segregation of duties, auditability, data residency). 

• Contribute to improving the observability stack to better monitor systems in the cloud and on-prem. 

• Help spread domain and tech knowledge across the team to prevent siloing. 

• Support other engineering teams via tickets and incident response while identifying recurring pain points to turn into paved-road solutions (golden paths, self-service tooling, standardized platform patterns). 

• Manage OS-level configuration via Ansible for on-prem/VM fleets (including AIT facility systems, in coordination with IT). 

• Provide architectural support and guidance to other engineering teams on selected cloud, platform, and security topics. 

• Contribute to and maintain infrastructure documentation and onboarding materials. 

Job requirements

About you  

Required:  

• Significant hands-on experience designing, securing, administering and operating software systems in the cloud. 

• Hands-on experience with AWS or a comparable hyperscaler in a production setting. 

• Experience with containerization, Kubernetes, and cloud-agnostic deployment technologies. 

• Experience administering and maintaining databases and cloud-hosted services - both self-hosted and managed/cloud-native. 

• Experience maintaining and administering on-prem/VM-based Linux systems alongside cloud resources and management of configurations via Ansible. 

• Experience with virtualization platforms, configuration of routers, switches, VLANs, network segmentation, etc. 

• Experience with VPCs, cloud networking, and modern zero-trust/mesh networking tools (e.g., Tailscale). 

• Solid working knowledge of Terraform; comfortable adopting Terramate (or similar IaC orchestration tooling) if you haven't used it yet. 

• Experience with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, time-series stores). 

• Solid working knowledge in practical security fundamentals: secrets/encryption management, IAM least-privilege, network segmentation, audit logging. 

• A track record of owning systems end-to-end while being a reliable, collaborative team member. 

Nice to Have: 

• Experience with an EU-sovereign cloud provider (e.g., Scaleway, T Public Cloud, STACKIT). 

• Experience with incident response / operational practices. 

• Exposure to ISO/IEC 27001 (or comparable public-sector/security-relevant certifications), or interest in contributing to certification efforts. 

• Experience with GitOps/CD tooling (e.g., Argo CD, Argo Workflows). 

• Experience administering Git hosting platforms for engineering teams (e.g., GitHub/GitLab administration). 

• Experience administering Windows VMs. 

• Experience in aerospace, satellite ground segment, or other regulated/mission-critical environments. 

• Experience with cloud- agnostic secrets management (e.g., OpenBao). 

• Openness to being on-call. 

Why join constellr?

• High-Impact National Security Mission:  Be part of an ambitious mission to launch the world’s first commercial thermal infrared constellation, delivering sovereign-grade "behavioural" intelligence from space to close critical blind spots for defence, intelligence, and maritime surveillance agencies.
• Fast-Paced "New Space" Innovation:  Work at the leading edge of a rapidly evolving defence sector. By leveraging modern, agile New Space methodologies, you will help design, build, and deploy dual-use thermal payloads into operational orbit at a speed and scale that traditional aerospace models simply cannot match.
• Broad Interdisciplinary Exposure:  Accelerate your professional growth by collaborating daily with a diverse, international cohort of astrophysicists, software developers, and defence-system engineers.
• Inclusive & Scientific Culture:  Join a high-trust team deeply committed to diversity, inclusion, and scientific excellence, where academic curiosity is paired with high autonomy and a flat hierarchy.
• Financial Upside & Well-being:  Benefit from a Virtual Share Option Plan (VSOP) for permanent employees, giving you a true stake in the company's growth, alongside highly flexible hybrid working models.