Cloud Engineer

Here at The Exploration Company, we are building spacecraft for humanity. As a Cloud Engineer, you will operate and support the cloud platforms that power The Exploration Company’s engineering, operations, and data workloads in France. You will design, deploy, and maintain infrastructure on AWS and SecNumCloud-qualified cloud services so teams can work securely and reliably across both environments. This hands-on, high-ownership role sits at the intersection of aerospace and modern cloud engineering, with a strong focus on security, sovereignty, and compliance requirements. You will work on-site in France and collaborate closely with engineering teams to translate their needs into resilient, secure, and well-documented infrastructure. KEY RESPONSIBILITIES - Design, deploy, and operate cloud infrastructure on AWS and SecNumCloud-qualified cloud environments, including managed Kubernetes, compute, networking, storage, and managed database services. - Define and maintain a consistent architecture across AWS and SecNumCloud, including identity, networking, and secrets management, to keep environments comparable and portable where needed. - Build and maintain infrastructure as code (e.g., Terraform) so all environments are reproducible and version-controlled. - Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines that automate infrastructure and application builds, testing, and deployment. - Manage container platforms and orchestration, including Kubernetes cluster upgrades, networking, RBAC, and workload scheduling. - Set up and maintain observability (metrics, logging, alerting) to detect and resolve issues before they affect engineering or operations. - Enforce security and compliance best practices, including IAM policies, network segmentation, encryption at rest and in transit, key management, and vulnerability patching. - Support audits and compliance evidence collection for SecNumCloud and other applicable frameworks. - Define backup, retention, and disaster recovery strategies for critical data and services. - Collaborate with engineering teams to understand their requirements and deliver reliable infrastructure solutions. WHAT WE WOULD LOVE TO SEE FROM YOU - 3+ years of experience in a cloud infrastructure, DevOps, or platform engineering role. - Deep hands-on experience with AWS or GCP, including compute, networking, storage, and managed database services. - Solid experience with infrastructure as code (Terraform, Terragrunt) and version control workflows. - Experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or equivalent). - Strong understanding of networking concepts: VPCs, subnets, security groups, load balancers, DNS, and VPNs. - Working knowledge of containers and orchestration, ideally Kubernetes. - Experience with observability tooling such as Prometheus, Grafana, CloudWatch, or OpenTelemetry. - Willingness to learn sovereign and high-assurance cloud security requirements, and to apply them to cloud environments. Prior exposure is a plus but not required. - A security-first mindset with practical knowledge of IAM, secrets management, encryption, and compliance frameworks. - Fluent English. Working knowledge of French is not required but is considered an advantage. - Ability to work effectively in a multilingual team. NICE TO HAVE - Experience in the aerospace, defense, or mission-critical systems domain. - Experience with multi-region or disaster recovery architectures. - Experience with hybrid or multi-cloud architectures across AWS and sovereign cloud providers. - AWS certifications (Solutions Architect, DevOps Engineer - Professional) or equivalent. - Exposure to ISO 27001, FedRAMP, or other security certification environments. Why you should join us! What makes us special here at The Exploration Company and why we think you will enjoy working here is:   - We’re Agile - we make decisions fast whilst keeping our goals and systems in mind  - We’re Open and Collaborative - we are transparent about risks and obstacles, so that we can cooperate to overcome them   - We have a lot of Fun - we refuel our energy knowing we are democratising space. It’s a wonderful and rare opportunity, are YOU up for the challenge?   We'd love to hear from you if you wish to be a part of our journey. Please submit your CV now for immediate consideration and we will be in touch shortly.    The Exploration Company is an equal opportunity employer and values diversity. We do not discriminate based on race, religion, colour, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, age, marital status or disability status. Relocation assistance is provided for those willing to relocate including visa sponsorship where applicable.   All offers are contingent upon the successful completion of a background check, which will be subject to the country, role, and project you applied for. By submitting your application, you acknowledge and agree that any offer of employment may be conditional upon successful condition of this check. The Exploration Company partners with Zinc Work Limited located in the UK (Zinc), a third-party provider, to ensure this process as efficient and transparent as possible. If applicable, you will receive an email from Zinc upon acceptance of your offer with a link to a secure portal where you can provide the required information to Zinc.