Kubernetes Engineer – Rancher / RKE2

## What We Need
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.
## What You'll Do
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

## What You Have
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)