DevOps Team Lead

Social Discovery Group (SDG) is the 3rd largest social discovery company in the world, uniting 60+ brands with 500 million users. We solve the problems of loneliness, isolation, and disconnection by transforming virtual intimacy into the new normal. Our portfolio includes online communication platforms focusing on AI, game mechanics, and video streaming - , DateMyAge, Cupid Media, Dil Mil, Kiseki, and others.

SDG invests in IT startups around the world. Our investments include Open AI, Patreon, Flo, Clubhouse, Woebot, Flure, Astry, Coursera, , and many others.

We bring together a team of like-minded people and IT professionals specializing in the creation and development of globally impactful social discovery products. Our international team of 1200 professionals and digital nomads works all over the world.

Our teams of digital nomads work remotely from Cyprus, Malta, the USA, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Poland, Latvia, Serbia, Spain, Portugal, UAE, Israel, Turkey, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia and many other locations.

In August 2024, we achieved Great Place to Work US Certification This achievement reflects our core belief that a truly exceptional workplace is built on trust, pride, and camaraderie—not just great perks.

We are looking for a DevOps Team Lead to drive the transformation of CI/CD workflows across multiple products (including legacy components) and to lead a team of four DevOps engineers (2 Senior, 2 Middle). You will introduce industry-leading DevOps practices and tools, own the roadmap, support and evolve existing pipelines, and optimize ephemeral and pre-production environments for efficiency and reliability.

Your main tasks will be:

• Lead and develop the team: set goals, plan and distribute work, run 1:1s, mentor seniors/mids, give regular feedback, and participate in hiring.
• Own DevOps standards and roadmap: define and enforce IaC/GitOps/CI/CD best practices; review designs and pipelines; ensure security and reliability baselines.
• Modernize and support CI/CD: introduce improvements while ensuring stable operation of existing GitLab pipelines; optimize ephemeral/pre-prod environments.
• Partner with stakeholders: collaborate with product/engineering to enable developer self-service and smooth delivery across products.
• Measure and improve: track operational metrics, drive RCA for incidents, and implement continuous improvements.

We expect from you:

Team Leadership & Ways of Working

• Proven experience leading a DevOps/SRE/platform team (people development, feedback, collaboration, responsibility).
• Deep understanding of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), GitOps, and CI/CD principles; automation-first mindset and cross-functional collaboration.

Kubernetes (Bare-metal & On-premise)

• Strong experience operating self-managed Kubernetes clusters on bare-metal/on-prem.
• Confident troubleshooting networking, storage, and performance in such environments.
• Nice to have: familiarity with kubeadm, Calico, Cilium, OpenEBS, MetalLB, KubeVirt.

GitLab CI/CD

• Ability to design, optimize, and maintain complex GitLab pipelines.
• Experience with GitLab runners in Kubernetes and on dedicated RHEL hosts.
• Knowledge of ephemeral environments, caching strategies, and secure secrets management.

Linux System Administration (RHEL-based)

• Solid expertise managing and hardening RHEL-like systems (CentOS Stream, AlmaLinux).
• Package management with dnf, custom repo management, OS lifecycle practices.

Observability & Monitoring

• Practical experience with stacks such as OpenSearch (logs), Grafana (dashboards/alerting), and Prometheus/VictoriaMetrics (metrics).
• Ability to correlate logs, metrics, and traces to detect and resolve issues proactively.

Toolset

• Helm templating (Required)
• Terraform (Required)
• Ansible (Required)
• GitLab CI
• Argo CD for application deployment/management (Nice to have)

Shell Scripting & Automation

• Advanced Bash for automation, provisioning, and service configuration.
• Experience integrating scripts into CI/CD workflows and health checks.

Hands-on Development Insight

• Basic understanding of developer workflows; ability to work with developers to improve productivity, feedback loops, and deployment reliability.

Nice to have

• In-depth knowledge of networking protocols and technologies.
• Experience administering Windows environments.
• English at B2+ level.

What do we offer:

• REMOTE OPPORTUNITY to work full time;
• Vacation 28 calendar days per year;
• 7 wellness days per year (time off) that can be used to deal with household issues, to lie down and recover without taking sick leave;
• Bonuses up to $5000 for recommending successful applicants for positions in the company;
• 50% payment for professional training, international conferences and meetings;
• Corporate discount for English lessons;
• ​Health benefits. According to the paychecks, if you are not eligible for corporate medical insurance, the company will compensate you with up to $ 1,000 gross per year per employee. This can be spent on self-purchase of health insurance or on doctor's fees for yourself and close relatives (spouse, children);
• ​Workplace organization. The company provides all employees with an equipped workplace and all the necessary equipment (table, armchair, wifi, etc.) in our offices or co-working locations. In the other locations, the company provides reimbursement of workplace costs up to $ 1000 gross once every 3 years, according to the paychecks. This money can be spent on the rent of the co-working room, on equipping the working place at home (desk, chair, Internet, etc.) during those 3 years;
• Internal gamified gratitude system: receive bonuses from colleagues and exchange them for merch, team building activities, massage certificates, etc.

Sounds good? Join us now