Cloud Platform Engineer

Your role 

We are in search of a highly motivated analyst to work in the newly formed Platform Engineering team at ECMWF. In this role, you will contribute to ECMWF’s mission by undertaking the development, deployment, and observability of existing and new applications onto multiple infrastructure platforms. You will be expected to bring creative insights which enable these activities in heterogeneous environments to a high degree of quality and reliability.

The role sits in the Platform Engineering team, within the Application Delivery Section of our Computing Department. The Section provides platforms and services that enable ECMWF teams to consume computing resources at different levels (PaaS, SaaS) and to consistently deploy applications with different levels of support to a high degree of quality and reliability.

The Section achieves this through innovation in the areas of computer systems administration automation, application deployment and operation, reliability engineering, identity and access management, container orchestration, observability (monitoring, logging, and tracing), and PaaS/SaaS application development.

About ECMWF 

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is a world-leader in weather and environmental forecasting. As an international organisation we serve our members and the wider community with global weather predictions and data that is critical for understanding and solving the climate crisis. We function as a 24/7 research and operational centre with a focus on medium and long-range predictions, holding one of the largest meteorological data archives in the world. The success of our activities builds on the talent of our scientists and experts, strong partnerships with 35 Member and Co-operating States and the international community, some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world, and the use of innovative technologies and ML across our operations. 

ECMWF has also developed a strong partnership with the European Union and has been entrusted with the implementation and operation of the Climate Change and Atmosphere Monitoring Services of the EU Copernicus Programme. We also contribute to the Copernicus Emergency Management Service. Other areas of work include High Performance Computing and the development of digital tools that enable ECMWF to extend provision of data and products covering weather, climate, air quality, fire and flood prediction and monitoring.

See   for more info about what we do. 

In this role you will: 

• Deliver and support container orchestration infrastructures
• Automation of the deployment of software to containers, VMs, or bare metal
• PaaS application development and delivery
• SaaS application development and delivery
• Advocating for reliability engineering within ECMWF and its partners
• Participating in regular 24-hour on-call rotas for any critical systems and services in the relevant areas
• Any other relevant domains related to the team’s portfolio

These activities are undertaken with attention to security best practices, knowledge sharing within and outside of the organisation, clear documentation, and process management.

What we're looking for:

• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills, with a co-operative nature
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, with a proactive continuous improvement approach
• Self-motivated, and able to work with minimal supervision
• Dedication and enthusiasm to work in a geographically distributed team 
• Ability to work efficiently and complete diverse tasks in a timely manner

Your education and experience:

• A university degree (EQF Level 6) or equivalent industry experience
• Experience in designing and developing Linux-based cloud-native platforms

Your knowledge and skills:

We encourage you to apply even if you don’t feel you meet precisely all of the these criteria.

We encourage you to apply even if you don’t feel you meet precisely all of the these criteria. In particular, we welcome applications from candidates with network, storage, or software development backgrounds, to join this new multi-disciplinary team.

Demonstrable knowledge and skills in some of the following:

• Programming (any language) or scripting (Python, Ruby, Perl, Go)
• Cloud Native and Containers (Kubernetes, Helm, Docker)
• Cloud IaaS (OpenStack, AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure or similar) 
• Software engineering - Kubernetes application patterns (operators) and Cloud Native architectures (distributed applications, microservices)
• Automation toolchain (Terraform, Ansible, or similar)
• Linux system administration
• DevOps: CI/CD, Software Engineering, Automation pipelines
• The server, storage and networking components of Cloud applications

A working knowledge in some of the following is desirable:

• Observability, monitoring, logging and analytics, tracing applications
• Splunk, Grafana, Prometheus, Loki, ELK or similar
• Application Performance Monitoring
• NOSQL (MongoDB), SQL (PostgreSQL or MySQL)

Please provide clear examples of your knowledge and experience in the space provided on the application form.

Candidates must be able to work effectively in English and interviews will be conducted in English. A good knowledge of one of the Centre’s other working languages (French or German) is an advantage but not essential.

Other information 

Grade remuneration:  The successful candidates will be recruited at the A2 grade, according to the scales of the Co-ordinated Organisations. The position is assigned to the employment category STF-PL  as defined in the ECMWF Staff Regulations. Full details of salary scales and allowances available on the ECMWF website at . 

Starting date:                 01 July 2024

Length of contract:      Approximately four years to 30 September 2028

Location:                         This position can be located at either ECMWF's duty stations in Reading, UK, or in Bologna, Italy.

Candidates are expected to relocate to the duty station. As a multi-site organisation, ECMWF has adopted a hybrid organisation model which allows flexibility for staff to mix office working and teleworking, including working away from the duty station (within the area of our member states and co-operating states) for up to 10 working days per month.

Interviews by videoconference (MS Team) are expected to take place approximately a month after the closing date.  If you require any special accommodations in order to participate fully in our recruitment process, please contact us.

Who can apply 

Applicants are invited to complete the online application form by clicking on the apply button below. 

At ECMWF, we consider an inclusive environment as key for our success. We are dedicated to ensuring a workplace that embraces diversity and provides equal opportunities for all, without distinction as to race, gender, age, marital status, social status, disability, sexual orientation, religion, personality, ethnicity and culture. We value the benefits derived from a diverse workforce and are committed to having staff that reflect the diversity of the countries that are part of our community, in an environment that nurtures equality and inclusion. 

Applications are invited from nationals from ECMWF Member States and Co-operating States.  In these exceptional times, we also welcome applications from Ukrainian nationals for this vacancy.   Applications from nationals from other countries may be considered in exceptional cases. 

ECMWF Member States and Co-operating States are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Montenegro, Morocco, the Netherlands, Norway, North Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye and the United Kingdom.