Kubernetes Engineer – Rancher / RKE2

Oivan is looking for an Intermediate Kubernetes Engineer to join our team in Dubai. You will provide on-site operational support for enterprise Kubernetes platforms built on SUSE Rancher and RKE2, keep day-to-day operations running smoothly, and help the customer's team become confident in using and operating Rancher. This role requires:

• Strong, practical hands-on experience with Rancher and RKE2
• On-site operational support and day-to-day platform activities
• Solid Kubernetes troubleshooting and issue resolution skills
• Knowledge transfer and technical guidance to the team on Rancher usage and operations

This is a hands-on, customer-facing role. Candidates must be able to show real experience operating Rancher and RKE2 clusters, not only theoretical knowledge. We offer you the opportunity to apply and grow your skills with a diverse and geographically distributed technology team, working directly with customers on mission-critical Kubernetes platforms.

The following are the main duties you will do as part of this job:

• Provide on-site operational support for Rancher-managed RKE2 clusters at the customer's premises
• Carry out day-to-day operations: cluster health checks, node and workload management, namespace and project administration, and user access through Rancher RBAC
• Troubleshoot and resolve platform issues (nodes, pods, networking, DNS, ingress, storage and certificates), and escalate with clear findings when needed
• Operate Rancher Manager: managing downstream clusters, projects, users and roles, the app catalog and Helm-based deployments
• Support RKE2 cluster installation, configuration, scaling and routine maintenance, including on-premise and air-gapped environments
• Assist with planned Kubernetes, RKE2 and Rancher upgrades, and with etcd snapshots and Rancher backup and restore
• Monitor platforms using Rancher Monitoring (Prometheus and Grafana) and logging, and respond to alerts and incidents
• Apply security baselines such as the RKE2 CIS profile, Pod Security Admission and network policies
• Deliver knowledge transfer, hands-on walkthroughs and technical guidance to customer and internal teams on Rancher usage and operations
• Create and maintain runbooks, operational procedures and platform documentation
• Work closely with customer stakeholders and the wider Oivan and SUSE teams

Qualifications & Skills

Our ideal candidate will fulfill the following requirements:

• 3+ years of hands-on experience in IT, with 2+ years operating Kubernetes in production
• Strong practical experience with Rancher and RKE2:
  • Rancher Manager day-2 operations: downstream clusters, projects, RBAC, catalog and apps
  • RKE2 server and agent nodes, config.yaml, embedded containerd, etcd and air-gapped installation
• Solid Kubernetes troubleshooting skills:
  • Debugging with kubectl, events, logs, crictl and node-level tools
  • Diagnosing networking, DNS, storage, scheduling and certificate issues
• Working knowledge of Helm; exposure to GitOps (Rancher Fleet, Argo CD or Flux) is a plus
• Good Linux administration (SLES / SLE Micro, RHEL or Ubuntu) and networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS, load balancing, TLS)
• Familiarity with Prometheus, Grafana and centralized logging
• Bash scripting; Ansible or Terraform is a plus
• Ability to explain technical topics clearly and coach others (knowledge transfer, training, documentation)
• Experience working on-site in on-premise enterprise environments
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field
• English (advanced); Arabic language skills are an advantage

Desirable

• SUSE Virtualization (Harvester), SUSE Storage (Longhorn) and SUSE Security (NeuVector)
• CNI knowledge: Canal, Calico or Cilium
• Private registries and air-gapped image management (e.g., Harbor)
• Backup tooling such as Velero
• Exposure to CI/CD tooling (GitLab CI, Jenkins or GitHub Actions)

Preferred Certifications

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
• SUSE Rancher certification (Administrator or Deployment Specialist)
• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)