At Koonkie, we believe that the world's most talented engineers and scientists should be working on the world’s most urgent problems. Our mission is to use cutting-edge genomic science to restore degraded environments and act as better stewards of nature. If you are ready to trade the "big tech" grind for a value-aligned mission where your code directly contributes to global biodiversity health and soil-carbon restoration, Koonkie is your destination.

The Perks:

- Mission-Driven: Work on a platform that has a tangible, positive impact on the planet.
- 100% Remote: We value results over office hours. Work from anywhere in Canada (with a strong preference for British Columbia).
- High Autonomy: Join a lean, senior-heavy team where your expertise is respected and your voice defines the architecture.
- Scientific Integrity: Collaborate with world-class researchers to turn raw DNA into environmental action.

The RoleAs our DevOps Engineer, you are the guardian of our infrastructure. You will manage the deployment, security, and scaling of a distributed system that spans mobile edge clients, RESTful APIs, and heavy-duty bioinformatics processing. Since our platform is cloud-based, you will be our internal subject matter expert for all things related to Azure and other cloud platforms. In addition to owning our infrastructure, you will act as a technical pillar for the developer team. You will help cultivate a culture of engineering excellence by mentoring junior developers and researchers, ensuring they have the technical support they need to contribute to our mission of environmental stewardship.

Qualifications & Experience

- Education: BSc or MSc in Computer Science or Software Engineering.
- Experience: 5+ years in a Senior DevOps or Site Reliability (SRE) role.
- Technical Stack:



Expert in Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform/Bicep), CI/CD (GitHub Actions), and Cloud Security (OAuth 2.0, IAM). Proficiency in backend development in Python. Familiarity with Node.js.
- Azure Mastery: Extensive experience managing Azure Blob Storage for large-scale data I/O, Azure Container Registry (ACR) for runtime environments, and Azure-native authentication (Managed Identities) for automated workflows.
- Familiarity with another cloud service (e.g., AWS or GCP)

Key Responsibilities

- Infrastructure as Code: Maintain and scale the Azure-native ecosystem that powers our environmental analysis.
- API & Middleware Management: Maintain, troubleshoot, and extend the existing backend microservices that securely synchronize metadata from the Flutter field mobile app with the Azure storage layer robustly in the face of network disconnects.
- Setting Management: Orchestrate the deployment of containerized bioinformatics tools with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and GPU resources to ensure reproducible scientific, Machine Learning, and Deep Learning environments.
- Security & Auth: Enforce secure data flow between Flutter mobile clients and Azure backend services using robust OAuth 2.0 protocols. Architect and manage secure cloud-based networking configurations. Build a secure foundation for later SOC 2 and ISO 27001 certification.
- CI/CD Architecture:



Build and maintain automated testing and deployment pipelines across all interconnected repositories, including code validation, linting, and security scanning.
- Monitoring: Design and implement comprehensive monitoring capabilities to proactively detect performance bottlenecks and to optimize performance while controlling costs.
- Mentoring: Serve as a technical mentor and escalation point for junior developers and researchers, providing guidance on best practices, system architecture, and deployment pipelines.
- Technical Leadership: Lead code reviews and pair-programming sessions to elevate the technical capabilities of the broader team.

Desired Skills

- Expertise in configuring alerts, dashboards, and automated incident detection within the Azure ecosystem.
- Familiarity with Federated Learning.
- Hands-on experience with configuring secrets and access control lists in Azure.
- Familiarity with chat-based generative AI (e.g., Claude, Gemini, etc.).
- Experience with agentic coding tools (e.g., Claude Code, Gemini CLI, etc.).
- Demonstrated experience mentoring junior engineers, interns, or researchers, with a strong ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly and patiently.

The Ideal PersonalityYou are an "Infrastructure Strategist" and back-end problem-solver. You thrive on complexity but strive for simplicity. You enjoy the autonomy of work from home and are an expert at asynchronous collaboration, leaving clear documentation and clean trails for others to follow.

You stay calm under pressure and take pride in building systems that are secure by design and "boringly" stable. You have a security mindset, know how to design threat models, and know how to make an engineering trade-off between security and productivity.

📌 DevOps Engineer (Azure Specialist) (Canada)
🏢 Koonkie
📍 Canada