Senior DevOps AWS / EKS Engineer (Judgement, Security, Real Production)

Join Centaurea as a Senior DevOps AWS / EKS Engineer and build infrastructure clients never have to worry about.

🤝 Format: On-site / In-Office

💰 Salary: $3,000 – $4000 USD (Net. Stable + Bonus + Equity as Tokens)

📍 Locations: Tbilisi (Georgia)

🎯 Requirements: 5+ yrs Kubernetes (EKS) · strong AWS (ideally certified) · Security · LGTM · Python · AI / MCP

👋 We are Centaurea — a team of imperfect people with a passion to build good, useful software. We are looking for a capable Senior DevOps Engineer who values real skills and clean architecture over "hype-driven infrastructure," who is sharp and still curious, willing to do the hard work, and ready to drive success through honest, smart work. If you want to master your craft and build reliable, secure, observable infrastructure alongside teammates who actually care about the quality of what they deliver — in a culture that values craft, accepts imperfection, and prioritizes solving real problems — you belong here.

🧱 What We Believe In (Our Culture)

We don't do "Rockstars." We do Engineering.

• Mastery over Magic. We value strong fundamentals (Linux, networking, distributed systems, security, concurrency). We don't just paste manifests and charts; we understand how it works under the hood.
• Knowledge Flows Both Ways. Work alongside engineers who'll answer the hard questions at the whiteboard — and expect you to have answers worth stealing too. Bring a smarter way and watch it ship, not die in a backlog. This is the room people get sharp in.
• Improve the Machine, Not Just Work In It. Here you own the machine. See a way to make the whole team faster — a better pipeline, an AI agent that takes toil off people, an MCP server that gives our agents safe access to infrastructure, a tool worth adopting? Bring it. Good ideas here get integrated, not filed. The work gets better because the machine that delivers it gets better.
• High-Density Experience. Strong people sharpen fast here because the bar is high. We throw you into the deep end with real responsibility. Mess up — we fix it together and expect the lesson to stick the first time.
• No NOC. Not a typo. There is no NOC, no separate SRE team and no change-approval board behind you. Your change reaches production on the strength of your own verification: you plan it, you dry-run it, you roll it through staging, you watch the dashboards after rollout, you own what it does at 2am and who can get into it. Nobody cleans up after you, because there is nobody whose job that is.
• Judged Out Loud. Work here is discussed in plain words, sometimes in front of the team. "This alert is noise, you didn't check it, fix it today" is normal speech in a team that values results over ego and personal comfort. In return, you get the same right: call anything broken, including the founder's decisions, but only with stronger arguments and desire to improve, not to war or defend.

🔎 Who We Are Looking For

We are looking for a "Builder 🧱" — someone who takes pride in the platform that runs in production, not just the proof of concept. We value trajectory and attitude over a perfect checklist.

• ✅ You have "Quiet Confidence." You are good at what you do, but humble enough to say "I don't know" and go find the answer. You bring: Kubernetes: 5+ years in production, EKS preferred. AWS: strong hands-on depth, ideally certified (DevOps Engineer – Professional, Solutions Architect – Professional or Security – Specialty). Security. Observability: LGTM — Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir.​​​​​​​ Python: scripting for automation and tooling.​​​​​​​ AI / MCP: LLM agents and MCP servers wired into real workflows, with access scoped so agents never hold the keys to production. Coming from GKE, AKS or on-prem? Welcome — with a reduced starting rate for the first months while you convert to AWS, then we re-evaluate contract terms.
• ✅ You are realistic and curious. Solid fundamentals and background, but you clearly see your gaps and are curious enough to understand the problem better, learn a different solution, and become a tiny better version of yourself tomorrow.
• ✅ You value feedback. Code review isn't a battleground — it's free education. You are open to critique because you want your work to be better, not because you want to be right.
• ✅ You are a "Finisher." You don't just build the happy path. You handle the failure modes, the rollbacks, the alerts that actually mean something, the runbooks and the boring parts of the setup — because you respect the users and the stability of the system.
• ✅ Security is part of your job, not someone else's. Least privilege by default, secrets that never touch git or logs, every change checked for who it lets in. A client trusts us with their production; you don't spend that trust.
• ✅ You verify like there's no safety net — because there isn't. Plan, dry run, staging and a post-rollout look at the dashboards are part of "done," not a follow-up ticket. "Applied cleanly" is not a verification strategy.
• 📌 Bonus points for CKA/CKS, or a background in Math/Physics or competitive programming — we love abstract thinkers!

🛠 The Tech & The Work

• Core: Kubernetes (EKS), AWS, Python
• Observability: LGTM — Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir
• Security: IAM, secrets, network policies, image and supply-chain controls, audit trails
• AI: LLM agents, MCP
• The Vibe: Our client's production AWS environment — real systems, real users, real stakes. Reliability and security are exactly what the client pays us for.

🎁 What We Offer

• No Ceiling. We care about your output. Deliver results, solve problems — you move up, simple as that. Trust here is earned: first months, expect scrutiny; prove reliable, and delegation becomes near-total — production keys included.
• Stability & Trust. 100% official employment and white salary. We honor our commitments so you can focus on the work.
• Flexible Environment. Comfortable offices steps away from the subway in Minsk or Tbilisi. We value output over strict hours, but we need you present.
• In-Person Collaboration. Complex problems are best solved face-to-face, at a whiteboard, not in a Slack thread. We value the energy of a real team.
• True Ownership. Competitive wage + Performance Bonuses. For those who stay and build with us, we offer a token-based equity program. We want you to own a piece of the value you create.

💰 Salary: $3,000 – $4000 USD (Net. Based on skills & maturity. Stable salary + Bonus + Equity). As you help to unlock value and drive revenue, your compensation grows. We want a partner who shares in the victory.

⛰️ Beyond tokens, there's a partner track — it's not granted, but rather earned over years of honest and smart work for the company; one person in our history has walked it.

🚀 Ready to Build?

We aren't looking for the person who talks the loudest. We are looking for the person who cares the most.

IMPORTANT: When applying, please answer this specific question (briefly, like 3–4 sentences max, strictly no AI): Tell us about the most complex and non-obvious infrastructure or security problem you introduced to the system (a change, a config, a rollout), how you finally recognized it, and how you fixed it?​​​​​​​

P.S. This role isn't for those seeking applause or a spotlight. It is for the grounded builders who find satisfaction in solving the puzzle, helping the team, and seeing the client succeed.