Openstack Engineer L2

Host360

For engineers who architect, build, and scale production-grade OpenStack infrastructure.

Job Title: OpenStack Engineer L2

Company: Host360

Experience: 2 to 4 Years in OpenStack / Cloud Infrastructure Engineering

Location: Remote

Type: Full Time

Positions: 1

CTC- As per industry standards (based on experience and expertise)

Role Description

Host360 is seeking a highly skilled OpenStack Engineer to join our cloud infrastructure team. In this role, you will be responsible for designing, deploying, and operating production-grade OpenStack environments, driving infrastructure reliability, and leading technical initiatives that power our cloud platform at scale.

You will operate at the intersection of deep systems engineering, platform architecture, and operational excellence. This role is ideal for engineers who have battle-tested experience running OpenStack in production, a strong automation-first mindset, and the ability to mentor junior engineers while contributing to strategic infrastructure decisions.

##What You'll Do

1. OpenStack Architecture & Deployment

• Design, deploy, and manage multi-node OpenStack clusters (Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Glance, Keystone, Heat, Horizon, Octavia, Masakari, Barbican) across development, staging, and production environments
• Architect highly available, fault-tolerant OpenStack control planes with Pacemaker, HAProxy, Keepalived, or equivalent HA stacks
• Plan and execute OpenStack version upgrades, migrations, and lifecycle management with minimal service disruption
• Define reference architectures, deployment blueprints, and infrastructure standards for OpenStack environments
• Evaluate and integrate upstream OpenStack releases, patches, and community-driven enhancements

2. Infrastructure Operations & Reliability

• Own end-to-end operational reliability of OpenStack infrastructure including compute, storage, networking, and identity services
• Implement and maintain monitoring, alerting, and observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK) for OpenStack components
• Perform proactive capacity planning, performance tuning, and resource optimization across the platform
• Lead incident response, root cause analysis (RCA), and post-mortem processes for infrastructure outages
• Manage backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity strategies for OpenStack workloads
• Conduct routine health checks, preventive maintenance, and security patching for all infrastructure layers

3. Networking & Storage Engineering

• Design and manage OpenStack Neutron-based SDN environments including provider networks, tenant networks, floating IPs, security groups, and L3/L7 load balancing (Octavia)
• Configure and troubleshoot OVS, OVN, LinuxBridge, or other Neutron ML2 plugins and mechanism drivers
• Manage Cinder block storage backends (Ceph, LVM, NFS, NetApp, Pure Storage, HP Primera, HP Alletra Storage) and Glance image services
• Architect and operate Ceph clusters for unified block, object, and file storage integrated with OpenStack
• Implement network segmentation, VXLAN/VLAN overlays, BGP peering, and tenant isolation strategies

4. Automation, IaC & CI/CD

• Build and maintain infrastructure-as-code (IaC) pipelines using Ansible, Terraform, Kolla-Ansible, or TripleO for OpenStack deployment and configuration management
• Develop automation scripts and tooling (Python, Bash) for day-2 operations, provisioning, scaling, and self-healing workflows
• Implement CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure changes, configuration validation, and automated testing
• Maintain GitOps-driven workflows for infrastructure versioning, change tracking, and audit compliance
• Create and manage Heat templates, Ansible playbooks, and custom orchestration for tenant provisioning

5. Security, Compliance & Hardening

• Implement security best practices for OpenStack deployments including Keystone RBAC, TLS termination, secret management (Barbican), and API hardening
• Collaborate with security teams to conduct vulnerability assessments, CIS benchmarking, and compliance audits
• Manage certificate lifecycle, key rotation, and encryption-at-rest/in-transit across the platform
• Enforce tenant isolation, network microsegmentation, and least-privilege access policies
• Support regulatory compliance requirements (SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR) as they relate to infrastructure

6. Mentorship, Leadership & Cross-Functional Collaboration

• Mentor junior and mid-level engineers on OpenStack internals, troubleshooting methodologies, and operational best practices
• Partner with Platform Engineering, Infrastructure Engineering, Security, Compliance, Customer Success, and Pre-Sales teams
• Lead internal knowledge-sharing through technical workshops, brown-bag sessions, and comprehensive documentation
• Provide technical input during go-to-market planning, customer architecture reviews, and pre-sales engagements
• Act as a subject matter expert (SME) for OpenStack and private cloud technologies across the organization

7. Documentation & Thought Leadership

• Create and maintain technical documentation, architecture decision records (ADRs), runbooks, and operational playbooks
• Maintain up-to-date architecture diagrams, system designs, and technology evaluation frameworks
• Present findings, recommendations, and technology roadmaps to leadership and stakeholders
• Contribute to technical blogs, whitepapers, upstream OpenStack contributions, or open-source projects (encouraged)

##WHAT WE'RE LOOKING FOR

1. OpenStack & Cloud Infrastructure Expertise (Must Have)

• 2-4 years of hands-on experience deploying, operating, and troubleshooting OpenStack in production environments
• Deep knowledge of core OpenStack services: Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Glance, Keystone, Heat, Horizon, Octavia, Masakari, and Barbican
• Strong experience with OpenStack deployment toolchain: Kolla-Ansible
• Production experience with Ceph storage clusters (deployment, tuning, troubleshooting, scaling)
• Ability to troubleshoot and resolve complex issues across the platform.
• Solid understanding of Linux systems administration (RHEL/CentOS/Ubuntu), KVM/QEMU virtualization, and bare-metal infrastructure
• Expertise in fine-tuning and optimizing clusters to enhance performance and maximize resource utilization.

2. Networking & Systems Fundamentals (Must Have)

• Deep understanding of L2/L3 networking, SDN concepts, VXLAN/VLAN, BGP, DNS, DHCP, and load balancing
• Hands-on experience with OVS/OVN, Neutron ML2 plugins, and network troubleshooting tools
• Strong Linux networking skills: iptables/nftables, namespaces, bridges, bonding, and routing
• Experience with HA architectures: Pacemaker, HAProxy, Keepalived, Galera Cluster, RabbitMQ clustering

3. Automation & DevOps (Good to Have)

• Proficiency with Ansible, Terraform, and at least one scripting language (Python strongly preferred, Bash)
• Experience building CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure (Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions)
• Familiarity with GitOps practices, infrastructure versioning, and configuration management at scale
• Experience with containerization (Docker) and container orchestration (Kubernetes) is a strong plus

4. Observability & Operations (Must Have)

• Experience implementing monitoring and alerting stacks: Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK
• Strong incident management skills: on-call experience, RCA, post-mortem processes, and SLA/SLO management
• Experience with log aggregation, distributed tracing, and capacity planning methodologies

5. AI/ML Skills (Good to Have)

• Foundational understanding of AI/ML concepts including NLP, LLMs, prompt engineering, RAG, intent detection, Agentic AI, and feature engineering
• Familiarity with ML lifecycle practices such as data pipelines, CI/CD for ML, model monitoring, drift detection, and performance metrics
• Experience deploying AI/ML workloads on OpenStack or Kubernetes-based infrastructure

6. Architecture & Product Thinking

• Ability to translate complex infrastructure challenges into structured architectural solutions and product requirements
• Experience writing or contributing to design documents, RFCs, ADRs, or technical specifications
• Strong system design thinking with focus on scalability, reliability, security, and cost optimization
• Understanding of compliance frameworks (SOC2, ISO 27001) and operational best practices

7. Professional Skills

• Ownership & Accountability: Takes full ownership of systems and outcomes; drives issues to resolution without escalation
• Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication; ability to explain complex infrastructure concepts to diverse audiences
• Leadership: Comfortable leading technical initiatives, mentoring engineers, and influencing decisions without direct authority
• Pragmatism: Balances engineering excellence with practical delivery; understands production trade-offs

This role is designed as a Product Engineering track.

#Career Growth

This role is designed as a Senior Engineering track.

Successful candidates will grow into:

• Principal OpenStack Engineer
• Platform Architect
• Engineering Manager Cloud Infrastructure
• Director of Platform Engineering

#How We Evaluate You

• How you architect and operate, not just what youve deployed
• How you handle production incidents and drive reliability
• How you reason through complexity and make trade-off decisions
• How you mentor others and elevate team capabilities

Apply only if youve shipped and operated real OpenStack infrastructure at scale.