Software Implementation and Deployment Engineer - Remote at Datafin Recruitment

ENVIRONMENT:

• A leading AI software company seeks a Software Implementation and Deployment Engineer to join their growing team. The role combines ownership of customer-hosted deployments with responsibility for backend and deployment architecture.
• The primary focus is deploying their customer-hosted software in client environments, taking end-to-end technical ownership. Responsibilities include working with clients to design suitable deployment architectures, configuring cloud infrastructure, integrating systems, supporting authentication and networking, and resolving deployment and runtime issues.
• The role may also involve hands-on support, including limited scripting or automation for customer-specific needs. The secondary focus is internal platform engineering, contributing to backend improvements, deployment and release automation, migration planning, and operational reliability.
• Ensuring secure, resilient backend design and consistent deployment standards is a key responsibility.

DUTIES:

Customer Focus – Implementation and Deployment

• Take end-to-end technical ownership of the deployment success of the customer-hosted software component across cloud and on-premises environments. Involvement will range from architecture discussions only to doing full implementations.
• Work directly with the customer’s technical stakeholders to assess infrastructure requirements and constraints, design deployment architectures, and guide implementations through to successful production rollout.
• Support integration of the customer-hosted component with customer systems and services, including identity providers, integration to core applications and orchestration.
• Develop and apply deployment automation, configuration scripts, and tooling to support consistent, repeatable customer installations and upgrades.
• Provide limited bespoke scripting or configuration to accommodate customer-specific requirements or environmental constraints where necessary.
• Support customer upgrade and migration activities, including coordination, validation, and issue resolution during version transitions.

Internal Focus – Platform and Deployment Engineering

• Contribute to the continuous improvement of backend and deployment architecture to improve reliability, scalability, and maintainability.
• Design, maintain, and improve deployment and release processes, including automation and tooling used for both internal and customer-hosted environments.
• Collaborate with internal engineering teams to diagnose and resolve backend, deployment, and operational issues.
• Help keep the backend technology stack current by evaluating and adopting improvements to frameworks, tooling, and deployment practices where appropriate.
• Embed security and vulnerability management practices into backend design, deployment workflows, and operational processes.

REQUIREMENTS:

Required Skills & Experience

Education:

• Bachelors in computer science, or equivalent infrastructure and training/experience
• Cloud certification with at least one cloud provider

Essential – Client Engagement Skills:

• Ability to engage confidently and professionally with customer technical stakeholders, acting as a trusted advisor throughout implementation and deployment activities.
• Strong communication skills, with the ability to explain technical concepts, constraints, and trade-offs clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences.
• A consultative approach to customer interactions, balancing customer requirements with platform standards, security considerations, and long-term maintainability.
• Proven ability to build and maintain trust with customers by taking ownership of issues, setting realistic expectations, and delivering reliable outcomes.
• Comfortable operating in customer-priority environments, demonstrating sound judgement when managing competing demands, escalations, and time-sensitive deployment activities.

Essential – Backend, Containerization & Data:

• Proficient with Docker, including multi-stage builds, image optimization, Docker Compose, and Docker Swarm.
• Experience deploying and maintaining Kubernetes clusters, including cluster configuration, workload deployment, and ongoing maintenance.
• Strong experience with MongoDB, including setup, configuration, indexing strategies, and aggregation pipelines. Knowledge of MongoDB Atlas and self-managed, deployments is required.
• Solid understanding of RESTful API design, including proper use of HTTP methods, status codes, validation, and error handling.
• Hands-on experience implementing authentication and authorization mechanisms such as NextAuth/Auth.js, OAuth 2.0, JWTs, and session-based authentication.
• Skilled in designing, building, and maintaining CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or similar tools for automated builds, testing, and deployments.

Cloud Platforms & Architecture:

• Hands-on experience deploying and operating applications on modern cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Strong understanding of cloud architecture concepts including multi-region deployments, load balancing, VPCs, networking (VPC peering, subnets, firewalls), containerized workloads, serverless deployments (e.g., Cloud Run, ECS, Container Apps), and container registries.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform to enable automated, repeatable, and version-controlled provisioning of cloud and network resources.
• Certifications in AWS, GCP, or Azure are beneficial and demonstrate verified cloud expertise.

Networking, Security, Operating Systems & System Administration:

• Strong hands-on experience with Linux and Windows environments, including server administration for applications and containerized deployments.
• Comfortable working extensively in a terminal and performing troubleshooting and configuration tasks in both OS environments.
• Experience configuring and managing firewalls, VPNs, load balancers, SSL certificates, and storage/shared volumes for internal and customer-hosted deployments.

Problem Solving & Troubleshooting:

• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills, with the ability to diagnose and resolve complex backend, infrastructure, networking, and deployment issues efficiently.

Documentation:

• Ability to create clear and accurate architecture diagrams and documentation at multiple levels of detail, from high-level conceptual overviews for non-technical stakeholders to detailed diagrams suitable for enterprise architecture reviews.

Platform Architecture Component:

• Platform App – Main web application for Digital Twin creation and interaction; SaaS platform.
• Dashboard App – Analytics, data visualization, and Digital Twin management; hosted by the customer.
• Admin App – Administration panel for system configuration.
• Shared Packages – Database models, UI components, utilities, and ML engine.

Tech Stack:

• Frontend Technologies – Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS, Radix UI.
• Backend Technologies – Next.js API Routes, NextAuth, Mongoose ODM.
• Database – MongoDB.
• Internal Infrastructure – Google Cloud Platform (Cloud Run, Cloud Build), Docker, GitHub Actions.
• Typical Customer Infrastructure – AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premises server implementations, Tier 1, HA, MR.
• Operating Systems – Mostly Linux-based server operating systems across customer-hosted and cloud environments.
• Monitoring – Sentry.

ATTRIBUTES:

• Excellent verbal and written communication with clear technical articulation
• Ability to work autonomously and drive features end-to-end
• Collaborative mindset and openness to feedback
• Comfortable with ambiguity in a fast-moving environment
• Proactive problem-solving and ability to propose design alternatives