DevOps Engineer Infrastructure

Are you a DevOps Engineer with a passion for infrastructure platforms? Do you want to work in a high-tech environment where research, innovation and education come together? Then we are looking for you!

TU Delft operates its own data centres and its own campus network. Deliberately. As a scientific institution, we believe that maintaining control over our digital infrastructure is not a matter of cost, but an essential prerequisite. You make sure that this infrastructure is not managed manually, but controlled through code.

Job description

You will work on one of the largest and most distinctive IT environments in the Netherlands. More than 40,000 researchers, students and staff rely on it every day. Behind this environment is not a standard catalogue of services, but a campus network that simultaneously supports lecture halls, laboratories, quantum research and high-performance computing — all from data centres that we own and operate ourselves.

We are transforming this environment from manual operations to code. Not as a project with an end date, but as a way of working. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is the standard, not the ambition. Everything goes through Git, everything is peer-reviewed, and what we build moves into production quickly so that we can learn from real feedback rather than assumptions.

Your work is at the heart of this transformation. You automate the deployment, configuration and registration of our data centre, network and platform services using tools such as Ansible, Terraform, NetBox, GitLab CI and Python. You help build the internal platform that enables other teams within the ICT Directorate to securely consume standardised infrastructure services themselves, rather than submitting a ticket and waiting.

What you will work on

Depending on your interests and strengths, your work will focus on areas including:

I. Establishing a reliable source of truth

NetBox is becoming our technical Configuration Management Database (CMDB). Network and infrastructure configurations should originate from it, rather than the other way around. That may sound less exciting than some of the other challenges, but it is the foundation for everything we automate next.

II. Connecting to our shared automation landscape

We are building an event-driven orchestration layer in which a request from a self-service portal automatically results in a deployed, registered and monitored service. From a portal request, to the desired state, to working infrastructure — with the resulting status fed back to the requester.

III. Compartmentalised research environments

For sensitive research, we build isolated environments driven by knowledge security requirements and the forthcoming Dutch Knowledge Security Screening Act (Wet screening kennisveiligheid). Segmentation, access control and demonstrable compliance are not secondary considerations here; they are part of the product itself.

IV. Rethinking the virtualisation layer

We are exploring Proxmox as an alternative to our current VMware stack. What this means for networking, storage and physical infrastructure remains an open technical question — one that you will help us explore, design and build.

V. Moving from monitoring to measurable reliability

Knowing that something is broken is not the same as knowing how reliable it is. Observability is one of the major areas we still need to develop further.

You will help shape our technical direction. You will have the freedom to make choices, initiate improvements and introduce new tooling — and we expect you to be able to explain and defend those choices to colleagues and stakeholders who may see things differently.

How we work

We work in multidisciplinary teams using an agile way of working. Everything is peer-reviewed, including infrastructure code. Documentation where necessary, code wherever possible. We use AI agents to work faster and more accurately, and we expect you to be curious about their potential.

You will join the Campus Connectivity team. The working language within the team is Dutch or English.

Requirements

What we are looking for

We are looking for an automation engineer. Networking knowledge is an advantage, not a requirement.

We expect you to bring:

• You have automated production infrastructure using code, for example with Ansible, Terraform or Pulumi — and you can tell us what went wrong along the way and what you learned from it.
• You programme in Python or a comparable language at a level where you can build your own tooling rather than simply copy scripts.
• You are comfortable working with Linux.
• Git and CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery) are part of the way you work, rather than tools you use on the side.
• You incorporate security into your designs from the outset, rather than treating it as a final check.
• You enjoy collaborating with other teams and can explain a technical decision to someone who is not an engineer.

The following would be an advantage — but these are also things you can learn here:

• Networking: routing, switching, firewalls, segmentation and Software Defined Networking (SDN).
• NetBox or another source-of-truth platform.
• Virtualisation: Proxmox, VMware and OpenShift.
• Event-driven architecture, workflow orchestration and container platforms.
• Working in an environment with formal security and compliance requirements, such as those arising from the Dutch Cybersecurity Act (Cyberbeveiligingswet).

We have experienced network and infrastructure specialists who can teach you the networking side.What we are looking for is someone who can help them take automation to the next level.

This role is probably not for you if

• You primarily want to continue working in a hyperscaler-driven environment. We use cloud services where they make sense, but we deliberately place the emphasis on our own infrastructure in our own data centres.
• You expect the environment to already be completely streamlined. It is not. A lot of manual processes have developed over time, and cleaning those up and automating them is part of the job.
• You only want to build and do not want to persuade. Automation affects other teams here, and bringing those teams along is part of making it work.

TU Delft (Delft University of Technology)

Working at TU Delft means contributing to solutions that really make a difference.

For over 180 years, we have been training engineers who make an impact worldwide in companies, government bodies, or as entrepreneurs. Our alumni turn knowledge into concrete solutions for the challenges of today and tomorrow. These challenges are changing rapidly. That is why we focus on themes such as energy, climate, digitalisation, artificial intelligence (AI), and smart mobility every day. Our education and research are directly aligned with what society needs now and in the future.

At TU Delft, our people make the difference. With their knowledge and curiosity, our staff provide a high-quality education and conduct pioneering research that extends beyond the campus. You will have the opportunity to take the initiative, work with others, and grow as a professional. Working at TU Delft means join an international community of professionals and students. Together, we create knowledge, innovations, and solutions that help move the world forward.

University Corporate Office – ICT

At the ICT Directorate, we work with approximately 200 colleagues divided into several teams: Shared Service Centre, Project Management Services, Information Management, Security, Privacy & Architecture and Innovation.

We, as the ICT Directorate, work on a variety of projects, together with the faculties and other directorates of Delft University of Technology (TU Delft). The complexity and size of the organisation often cause our work to be challenging yet rewarding. The biggest task we face in the coming years as TU Delft is to accelerate digitalisation to strengthen our position as a world-class university.

We often work together with the specialists in our own ICT department and with our colleagues spread across the university. The campus is a vibrant environment that buzzes with activity. The culture is informal and inclusive. There is room for a casual chat at the coffee machine and, if you like, you canparticipatein various activities organised on campus. Moreover, within the ICT directorate, you will be given the trust and freedom to manage your own work. There are many possibilities in terms oftrainingand we consider your personal development to bevery important.

Have a look at our work-in-ictpage.

Conditions of employment

• Duration of contract is 1 jaar. Temporary with prospect of permanent
• A job of 36-40 hours per week.
• A salary based on Scale 11 of the CAO for Dutch Universities with a salary between €4925 - €6682 gross per month based on a fulltime contract (38 hours), plus 8% holiday allowance and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%.
• An excellent pension scheme via the ABP.
• The possibility to compile an individual employment package every year.
• Discount with health insurers on supplemental packages.
• Flexible working week.
• Every year, 232 leave hours (at 38 hours). You can also sell or buy additional leave hours via the individual choice budget.
• Plenty of opportunities for education, training and courses.
• Partially paid parental leave
• Attention for working healthy and energetically with the vitality program.

Additional information

If you would like more information about this vacancy please contact Michelle Ton, Manager Infra m.d.ton@tudelft.nl

TECHNICAL & MARKET ANALYSIS | Appended by Quantum.Jobs

The emergence of specialized DevOps Infrastructure Engineers within academic and research environments represents a critical structural transition from ad-hoc experimental setups to automated, code-driven computational platforms. As research institutions scale their high-performance computing and quantum research facilities, manual infrastructure management creates operational bottlenecks and integration friction across complex workloads. This role type serves as a core enablement pillar within the systems integration layer, converting physical data centers and campus networks into programmable, self-service environments. Market signals across European deep-tech ecosystems emphasize that institutional control over digital infrastructure is essential for maintaining research autonomy, data sovereignty, and compliance with emerging knowledge security standards. By codifying network, storage, and virtualization layers, this function secures the operational foundation required for continuous scientific throughput and reliable cross-disciplinary collaboration at scale.

In the broader deep-tech and quantum computing value chains, infrastructure engineering acts as the foundational layer connecting physical hardware, specialized laboratories, and high-performance compute clusters. Institutional research environments face unique macro constraints, including high operational security requirements, strict data governance mandates, and the technical debt of legacy manual workflows. Current industry focus lies on bridging classical and quantum capabilities at scale, which demands robust, automated infrastructure capable of supporting dynamic workload allocation without compromising network security or system uptime.

The ecosystem is currently navigating a shift away from sole reliance on external public cloud hyperscalers toward sovereign, localized data infrastructure optimized for high-throughput scientific compute. Vendor lock-in risks, escalating recurring cloud costs, and national security directives regarding critical research technologies drive organizations to modernize on-premise platforms. Modernizing these environments requires transforming traditional static configurations into declarative Infrastructure as Code pipelines, ensuring complete traceability and peer-reviewed deployment processes.

Furthermore, academic institutions must balance open collaborative research with stringent compliance frameworks, such as national knowledge security acts and cybersecurity regulations. Compartmentalizing sensitive research environments while providing self-service access to general users requires sophisticated network segmentation and automated provisioning mechanisms. Modernizing this infrastructure layer mitigates institutional risks while establishing the baseline scalability required for next-generation scientific computing.

The technical capability architecture for this role centers on declarative automation frameworks, centralized configuration management, and event-driven orchestration. Establishing a single source of truth for network and infrastructure states allows automated pipelines to programmatically validate, deploy, and configure data center services. Integrating continuous delivery tools with version control systems replaces ticket-driven provisioning with programmatic API access, accelerating the delivery of secure computing platforms to research units.

Additionally, this engineering function requires expertise in virtualization stack evolution, hybrid network architectures, and observational health telemetry. Transitioning virtualization layers to open-source or modular platforms necessitates an architectural understanding of hypervisor networking, storage coupling, and automated state synchronization. Implementing comprehensive observability platforms enables proactive system reliability engineering rather than reactive failure response, ensuring high availability across multi-tenant research environments. - Accelerates the transition from legacy manual configurations to declarative infrastructure automated through version-controlled code artifacts

- Mitigates security and compliance risks by automating network segmentation and access controls for isolated research environments

- Facilitates continuous integration and rapid deployment across core institutional data center platforms and campus network architectures

- Standardizes configuration governance by implementing centralized, programmatic sources of truth for technical asset tracking

- Enables internal self-service capabilities, reducing service provisioning delays for multi-disciplinary research initiatives

- Optimizes capital efficiency by maximizing the utilization and performance of owned, on-premise data center resources

- Enhances infrastructure reliability and operational uptime through the deployment of automated observability and telemetry pipelines

- Supports the architectural evolution of virtualization platforms, lowering institutional dependency on proprietary vendor stacks

- Strengthens compliance posture against national knowledge security regulations and regional cybersecurity directives

- Streamlines cross-functional workflows between central IT directorates and specialized academic research units

- Reduces iteration friction in deploying complex computational workloads, including high-performance and quantum research platforms

- Protects intellectual property and sensitive technical data through automated, policy-enforced infrastructure isolation frameworksIndustry Tags: Infrastructure as Code, Academic IT Systems, High-Performance Computing, Network Automation, Infrastructure Engineering, Data Center Modernization, Sovereign Cloud Infrastructure, DevSecOps Strategy, Research IT Enablement

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