Senior Staff Data Center & OpenShift Operations Engineer(Contractor)

Role Description

This role is a contract assignment at Palo Alto Networks. Contractors will not be employed by Palo Alto Networks but through our trusted staffing partners.

- Location - Bengaluru, India (Hybrid)
- Duration - 12 months

Engagement Overview

This position is an Independent Contractor for an experienced Senior Data Center & OpenShift Operations Engineer based in India. This role serves as the foundation of our high-availability infrastructure, bridging physical hardware management with the Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) Or OpenStack.

The consultant will drive operations to achieve 99.99% availability by implementing resilient physical layout designs and automating cluster deployment, scaling, and self-healing mechanisms.

Key Responsibilities

- High-Availability (HA) Architecture: Monitor and maintain global data center systems using "Zero Single Point of Failure" (ZSPoF) topology across OpenShift control planes and worker nodes.
- Cluster Reliability Engineering: Deploy and manage production-grade OpenShift 4.x clusters across multiple power and cooling zones to hit strict 99.99% operational SLAs.
- Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity: Formulate, test, and perform automated failover strategies and backup/restore workflows via OADP (Velero) and Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management (ACM).
- Automated Cluster Maintenance: Execute non-disruptive rolling upgrades and maintenance utilizing GitOps (ArgoCD) and the Machine Config Operator for zero-downtime node evacuations.
- Deep-Stack Incident Resolution: Diagnose and resolve complex hardware and software layer incidents, ranging from host GPU firmware glitches to OpenShift SDN (OVN-Kubernetes) network latencies.
- Vendor & Asset Lifecycle Management: Coordinate with global hardware vendors (NVIDIA, Dell, Cisco) for equipment maintenance, warranty service, and security firmware updates.
- Capacity & Thermal Optimization: Design optimal rack density strategies for high-performance GPU clusters,



managing thermal metrics and Power Distribution Units (PDUs) to prevent trip events.
- Observability Pipeline: Maintain DCIM records and integrate hardware health metrics (IPMI/SNMP) directly into Prometheus/Grafana stacks for real-time alerting.
- Physical Deployment & Infrastructure Execution: Carry out rack and stack ops for high-density GPU servers, managing redundant power paths and high-speed (100G/200G) InfiniBand and Ethernet cabling.
- Live Hardware Servicing: Perform precision component replacement (CPUs, GPUs, NVMe drives) in live production environments while maintaining cluster quorum.

Technical Qualifications

- Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Electronics Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
- Platform Expertise: 5+ years of hands-on experience running and operating OpenStack/ProxMox in production environments.
- Hardware Operations: Deep expertise racking, stacking, and cabling high-density GPU platforms (e.g., NVIDIA DGX series) and specialized AI/ML server architectures.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Advanced proficiency with Ansible or Pulumi to automate bare-metal server provisioning and OpenShift cluster setup.
- Automation & Scripting: Solid Python and Bash scripting capability for building monitoring integrations and automated operational tooling.
- Storage & Virtualization: Practical experience with vSphere/KVM and enterprise storage engines like OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) or Ceph.
- Observability & DCIM: Hands-on knowledge of Netbox DCIM, alongside log/metric collection stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/Loki).

Physical & Site Requirements

- Equipment Handling: Capability to physically lift and position data center hardware up to 50 lbs (23 kg).
- Environment: Ability to perform tasks in high-decibel, climate-controlled hot/cold data center aisles.
- Dexterity & Mobility: Comfort working in tight rack enclosures for extended durations, including precision fiber cabling and rail mounting.
- Regional Travel: Occasional travel to secondary data center locations or regional edge POPs within India as needed.

📌 Senior Staff Data Center & OpenShift Operations Engineer(Contractor)tractor) (Bengaluru)
🏢 Palo Alto Networks
📍 Bengaluru