Site Reliability Engineer

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Recruitment Assistant at European Southern Observatory

ESO's IT landscape is undergoing a broad digital transformation to modernise and improve its operations. A major focus of this effort is the Integrated Operations Programme, which is going to transform operations for the VLT and the upcoming ELT at the Paranal Observatory.

In this context, Site Reliability Engineers play a key role ensuring the reliability, scalability, and continuous improvement of ESO's digital infrastructure - supporting both site-specific needs and organisation-wide transformation.

You will work in an international environment, at the ESO Headquarters in Garching, Germany with the option of mobile working within our correspondent framework. You will frequently work at the ESO Vitacura Offices in Santiago and at the observatory sites in Chile.

Main Duties and Responsibilities:

• Collaborate with engineering and operations teams to improve the reliability, scalability, and performance of critical systems and services.
• Design, implement, and maintain monitoring, alerting, and observability solutions to ensure high system availability and rapid incident response.
• Contribute to building robust CI/CD pipelines and automate infrastructure provisioning using infrastructure-as-code tools.
• Identify and remediate reliability risks across systems, services, and deployments in cloud and on-premise environments.
• Develop and maintain operational runbooks, system documentation, and internal tooling for support and diagnostics.
• Drive continuous improvement in system performance, cost efficiency, and operational resilience.
• Operate in an international environment with a focus on collaboration, knowledge sharing, and long-term service sustainability.

Reports to:

Head of IT Architecture Group of the Information Technology Department within the Directorate of Engineering.

Key competences and Experience:

• 3+ years of experience as a Systems Engineer, Network Engineer or in a similar infrastructure-focused role.
• Strong troubleshooting skills across networking, systems, and services.
• Solid experience with Linux system administration (e.g. RHEL, CentOS, Ubuntu).
• 2+ years hands-on experience with WAN and LAN networking, especially in distributed or remote environments.
• Experience with OS virtualization (e.g. KVM, VMware)
• Experience with automation/configuration tools such as Ansible or Puppet (basic to intermediate).
• Advanced scripting skills in Bash or Python.
• Working knowledge of Git (cloning, branching, merging, conflict resolution).
• Experience operating in a multi-site, on-premise environment.
• Familiarity with monitoring and observability tools (e.g., Icinga, TIG, Prometheus, Grafana).
• Good communication skills and ability to work across teams.
• Experience with infrastructure documentation and change management processes.
• A solid understanding of containerization and orchestration technologies such as Docker, Kubernetes or similar
• Willingness to learn and grow into cloud technologies (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Experience with Git platforms such as GitLab, GitHub, or Bitbucket.
• Understanding of web services, databases, and supporting infrastructure.
• Understanding of storage technologies (e.g. RAID, NAS, SAN, Object Storage).
• Exposure to cloud platforms (e.g. AWS, Azure, GCP), even at a basic level.
• Experience with automation to deploy and manage infrastructure, database and networking architectures
• Basic knowledge of project management practices (e.g. Agile, Kanban).
• Strong consulting, negotiation skills and ability to work within diverse teams and key stakeholders both internal and external to the organization.

Qualifications:

A Bachelor's degree or equivalent in relevant disciplines, e.g. data science, computer science, engineering is required.

Language Skills:

A very good command of English both oral and written is essential. A working knowledge of German and/or Spanish would be an advantage.

Duty Station:

Garching near Munich, Germany with regular duty travel to the ESO Vitacura Offices in Santiago and to the observatory sites in Chile.

Application:

If you are interested in working in areas of frontline science and technology and in a stimulating international environment, please visit for further details. Applicants are invited to apply online at . Applications must be completed in English and should include a motivation letter and CV. Within your CV, please provide the names and contact details of three persons familiar with your work and willing to provide a recommendation letter upon request. Referees will not be contacted without your prior consent.

Closing date for applications is .

Interviews are expected to start soon after this date.

Seniority level

• Seniority level

  Mid-Senior level

Employment type

• Employment type

  Full-time

Job function

• Job function

  Engineering and Design

• Industries

  Space Research and Technology and Government Administration

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