Expert Azure Platform Engineer - AKS & DevOps (Employed or freelance)

📋 Tasks and responsibilities

About the role

As a Platform Engineer, you will help development teams build, release and operate applications in a faster, more secure and more reliable way. You will design, implement and maintain the shared platform capabilities they depend on, including CI/CD pipelines, cloud infrastructure and deployment tooling.

This role has a strong focus on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), reusable Azure DevOps pipeline templates and Infrastructure as Code automation.

Key responsibilities

• Platform engineering & infrastructure: Design, build and maintain Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) clusters, both private and public, including node pool configuration, networking, ingress, autoscaling and confidential compute workloads.
• Azure platform management: Manage and further develop the Azure environment, including subscriptions, resource groups, Key Vault, Azure Container Registry, Service Bus, Storage Accounts and SQL databases.
• Container platforms: Operate and support OpenShift environments where relevant.
• Security & reliability: Ensure the platform remains secure, stable and compliant with agreed standards, including network policies, managed identities, TLS and RBAC.
• CI/CD pipeline development: Develop and maintain reusable multi-stage YAML pipeline templates in Azure DevOps for application repositories across the organisation.
• Deployment automation: Build and optimise pipelines for build, test, package and deployment of .NET 8 applications, including Docker/ACR image creation, database deployments with DACPAC/sqlpackage and Service Bus provisioning.
• PowerShell automation: Create and maintain PowerShell Core 7+ modules and scripts for configuration generation, deployment map parsing, secret retrieval, Terraform variable generation and Helm-based deployments.
• Quality & release governance: Ensure pipelines apply security controls, quality gates such as SonarQube, and promotion flows across DEV, TST, VAL, Manual Gate and PRD.
• Infrastructure as Code: Design, write and maintain Terraform modules to provision and configure Azure resources, including AKS workloads through the Helm provider, identity clients, SQL users, managed identities, Key Vault HSM keys and Service Bus RBAC.
• Lifecycle automation: Automate provisioning, scaling and lifecycle management using Terraform, Azure CLI and PowerShell.
• Terraform state management: Maintain Terraform state in an Azure Storage backend with AAD authentication and ensure repeatable, safe deployments across environments.
• Repository & Azure DevOps administration: Administer shared DevOps and deployment configuration repositories, support version control practices and branching strategies such as GitFlow, and manage service connections, agent pools, variable groups and environment approvals.
• Collaboration & enablement: Act as a link between infrastructure and development teams, guide them in using platform standards and deployment patterns, support troubleshooting, and maintain clear documentation and onboarding material.
• Code review & consistency: Review contributions to shared platform code to safeguard architectural consistency and backward compatibility.

Required skills & experience

• AKS: Hands-on experience with Azure Kubernetes Service, including networking, ingress, node pools, autoscaling, confidential compute and Helm chart deployments.
• DevOps practices: Strong understanding of CI/CD principles, GitFlow branching, environment promotion and deployment automation.
• .NET: Familiarity with the .NET 10 build toolchain, including dotnet build, NuGet, solution and project structure, and containerisation of .NET applications.
• PowerShell: Proficiency in PowerShell Core 7+, including modules (.psm1), classes, Pester 5+ tests and robust scripting with proper error handling.
• Azure: Broad experience with Azure services such as Key Vault, Container Registry, Service Bus, Storage Accounts, SQL Database, Managed Identities and RBAC.
• Cloud architecture: Good understanding of scalability, high availability, security and cost management principles.
• Azure DevOps: Practical experience with Azure DevOps (TFS), including YAML pipelines, extends templates, repositories, service connections, agent pools and artifacts.
• YAML pipelines: Ability to build and maintain multi-stage YAML templates with parameterisation, conditions and template composition.
• Terraform: Experience writing and maintaining Terraform configurations, including modules, providers (azurerm, helm, keycloak, mssql, kubernetes), state management and plan/apply workflows.
• Networking: Understanding of AKS- and Azure-related networking concepts such as VNets, NSGs, private endpoints, DNS, ingress controllers and proxy configuration.
• Architecture: Ability to reason about system architecture, including separation of concerns, shared platform design, module boundaries and extensibility.

Nice to have

• Experience with Keycloak or OpenID Connect identity management.
• Familiarity with Docker and optimisation of container image builds.
• Knowledge of automated database deployments using DACPAC and sqlpackage.
• Experience with SonarQube or similar code quality tools.
• Familiarity with confidential computing in Azure.
• Experience with the OpenShift container platform.

📝 Your profile

Experience

You bring expert-level experience in application engineering and platform-related environments.

Skills

• .NET Development
• Active Directory - Windows Server Management
• API Integration & Messaging
• Azure DevOps
• Cloud (Azure)
• Database management
• DNS, HTTP/HTTPS, VPNs
• Docker / Kubernetes
• Dynatrace, ELK Stack, Prometheus, Grafana
• Identity & Access Management
• Nuget Package Management
• PowerShell scripting
• Terraform
• Visual Studio

Languages

• Dutch
• English
• French

💼 Offer

You will be part of a growing Belgian SME where initiative and personal development are encouraged. We will provide you with an enjoyable work environment with fun colleagues. We will work out a career plan with you, with attention and a budget for extra education/certification. You can count on an attractive salary, supplemented with extra-legal benefits, including a company car.
(Freelance is also possible)