[MSO] Senior Proxmox Engineer (3-month contract)

Software Mind

3d•Remote

About The Position

Software Mind is seeking a Proxmox Engineer for a Dutch engineering team delivering private cloud services to government and regulated-market customers in the Netherlands. The client is a managed services provider operating the platform. This is a three-month, full-time assignment with the possibility of extension. The role is to assess and verify the client’s Proxmox environments—the out-of-band environment and the environment supporting the OpenStack platform—against good practice, stabilize them, and transfer operational knowledge to the engineers who will take over. The work involves assessing the current configurations and risks, remediating agreed findings, verifying that sizing matches actual and expected load, and working alongside the operational engineer on practical day-to-day activities so they can run the environment after the assignment. The engineer will work independently, determine what needs to be checked and in what order, communicate findings clearly to the client’s engineers and managers in the Netherlands, and distinguish critical issues from lower-priority improvements. Most contact with the Dutch team is remote.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in IT infrastructure and virtualization, including at least 2 years with Proxmox VE in production.
Strong hands-on production experience with Proxmox VE, including cluster setup, configuration, and upgrades.
Experience with the storage layer behind Proxmox and understanding of its performance characteristics.
Advanced Linux system administration, particularly with Debian-based distributions.
Networking experience in a virtualization context, including bridges, bonds, VLANs, and SDN, with the ability to troubleshoot across compute, storage, and network layers.
Capacity and performance analysis skills, including assessing whether an environment is correctly sized and supporting that assessment with data.
Production backup and restore experience, including verifying restores.
Scripting for automation using Bash, Python, or Ansible.
Experience assessing an environment not built by the candidate and documenting findings in an actionable form.
English proficiency at C1 level.
Ability to work independently on open-ended assessments and determine what to check and in what order.
Ability to communicate actionable findings plainly, including uncomfortable findings, and justify prioritization.
Ability to teach and transfer operational knowledge.
Ability to build working relationships remotely through reliability and clear communication.

Nice To Haves

Understanding of how OpenStack uses the underlying infrastructure.
Experience with other virtualization platforms such as VMware or KVM/libvirt, and migrations between them.
Ceph at scale.
Infrastructure as code experience with Ansible or Terraform.
Experience working in a regulated or government environment.
Any level of Dutch.

Responsibilities

Assess existing Proxmox VE environments—including cluster configuration, storage, networking, high availability, and backup—against good practice, and document findings.
Identify configuration gaps, single points of failure, and operational risks, and propose concrete remediation.
Verify sizing and capacity against actual and expected load, and clearly report where the environment may not meet demand.
Implement agreed corrections and improvements, and confirm they work.
Validate backup and restore processes, including end-to-end recovery.
Work with the OpenStack team to ensure the Proxmox layer supports the platform above it.
Produce documentation and runbooks that others can use.
Work alongside the client’s operational engineer and transfer knowledge through shared day-to-day work.
Report progress and findings directly to the client’s engineers and managers in the Netherlands.
Prioritize critical issues, communicate delays early, and keep stakeholders informed.