Job Description:
ROLE SUMMARY
We are looking for a self-motivated, highly driven DevOps Engineer who thrives on technical ownership and autonomous task execution. In this role, you will bridge day-to-day infrastructure engineering and long-term reliability by taking loosely defined requirements, breaking them down into concrete technical tasks, and driving them to completion with minimal day-to-day oversight.
You will design, automate, and maintain cloud infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, and observability frameworks while partnering closely with software development and platform teams.
🎯 KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
1. Individual Task Execution & Infrastructure Ownership
* Autonomous Delivery: Take ownership of infrastructure deliverables and feature sets from inception to deployment; operate independently between milestone check-ins. * Problem Decomposition: Translate high-level architectural requirements and loosely defined tickets into well-scoped, actionable technical tasks and execution plans. * Root-Cause Problem Solving: Investigate, diagnose, and permanently resolve complex production and CI/CD infrastructure failures rather than applying temporary patches.
2. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & Cloud Engineering
* Design, provision, and maintain secure, scalable cloud infrastructure using Terraform, CloudFormation, or equivalent IaC frameworks. * Manage cloud networking, compute capacity, security groups, and IAM policies following least-privilege principles.
3. CI/CD & Release Automation
* Build, optimize, and troubleshoot automated CI/CD release pipelines to enable fast, safe, and repeatable application deployments. * Debug build/release failures at both the framework and infrastructure layer (e.g., container build failures, permissions, compute bottlenecks).
4. Reliability, Observability & Operational Excellence
* Implement proactive monitoring, alerting, and log aggregation (e.g., Datadog, Prometheus, Grafana, CloudWatch) to ensure system visibility. * Participate in on-call rotations and incident triage; write post-incident reviews (PIRs) and implement preventative automations. * Champion operational excellence, system availability, and performance benchmarking.
5. Collaboration & Continuous Improvement
* Proactively communicate timelines, architectural tradeoffs, and roadblocks early to squad leads and stakeholders. * Contribute to team design/architecture reviews, write concise technical specs, and mentor junior engineers.
🛠️ REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS & TECHNICAL SKILLS
* Experience: 3–5+ years of dedicated experience in DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or Cloud Infrastructure Engineering. * Cloud Platforms: Strong hands-on proficiency in public cloud environments (AWS), including core services (VPC, EC2, EKS, S3, IAM, Route53, RDS). * Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Solid experience writing modular, reusable Terraform or CloudFormation scripts. * CI/CD & Automation: Proven track record building and managing CI/CD pipelines (e.g., GitHub Actions, Jenkins). * Containers & Orchestration: Solid working knowledge of Docker and container orchestration (Kubernetes / ECS). * Scripting & Automation: Proficiency in at least one scripting/programming language (Python, Bash, or Go). * OS & Networking: Strong Linux systems administration fundamentals, networking concepts (DNS, TCP/IP, HTTP/S, load balancers), and security best practices.
💡 KEY BEHAVIORAL COMPETENCIES (SELF-DRIVE & MINDSET)
* High Motivation & Ownership: Follows through on commitments end-to-end with pride of ownership; rolls up sleeves to solve blockers rather than waiting for direction. * Clear & Proactive Communication: Consistently communicates project progress, identifies risks before starting major tasks, and flags roadblocks without disappearing into low-impact work. * Critical Thinking & Simplicity: Looks at multiple solutions, validates trade-offs in context, and actively reduces unnecessary system complexity. * Continuous Learning (Shugi): Eager to explore new tools and techniques, actively solicits constructive feedback, and continuously refines internal processes (Shikumika).
🌟 PREFERRED / NICE-TO-HAVE QUALIFICATIONS
* Experience with database migrations, replication tools (e.g., Debezium, pglogical, AWS DMS), or PostgreSQL administration. * Experience with GitOps methodologies and deployment tools (ArgoCD). * Relevant cloud or Kubernetes certifications (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect / DevOps Engineer, CKA).
Rakuten Shugi Principles:
Our worldwide practices describe specific behaviours that make Rakuten unique and united across the
world. We expect Rakuten employees to model these 5 Shugi Principles of Success.
• Always improve, always advance. Only be satisfied with complete success - Kaizen.
• Be passionately professional. Take an uncompromising approach to your work and be determined
to be the best.
• Hypothesize - Practice - Validate - Shikumika. Use the Rakuten Cycle to success in unknown
territory.
• Maximize Customer Satisfaction. The greatest satisfaction for workers in a service industry is to
see their customers smile.
• Speed!! Speed!! Speed!! Always be conscious of time. Take charge, set clear goals, and engage
your team