Network Architect / Senior Lead-Data Center Networking, Automation & Linux Infrastructure

Description

About Gapstars

About Gapstars
At Gapstars, we partner with some of Europe's most ambitious companies, from disruptive tech startups to established Benelux accounting firms, helping them build high-performing teams in engineering and finance.

Headquartered in the Netherlands, with talent hubs in Sri Lanka and Portugal, we are home to 300+ professionals who thrive on solving real-world challenges with modern solutions. Our teams work across domains, from networking, marketplaces, SaaS, and AI to embedded finance and accounting, delivering scalable solutions that drive meaningful outcomes.

About the role
We are looking for a System & Network Engineer to help design, automate and operate our multi-vendor data center networks. You will work on modern fabric architectures (VXLAN/EVPN), build automation that removes manual configuration work, and keep highly available production environments running smoothly.

This is not a pure switching-and-routing role. Our network exists to carry compute, storage and cloud workloads, so you will work close to the systems layer: Linux hosts, clustered services, distributed storage and virtualization platforms. You should be as comfortable in a shell as you are on a device CLI, and curious about what happens above layer 3.

What you will do

Contribute to end-to-end network architecture initiatives across our data centers in a multi-vendor environment.
Design, operate and evolve VXLAN/EVPN-based data center fabrics, including high-availability and disaster recovery setups.
Develop and maintain Ansible-based automation for both network devices and Linux systems, integrated with GitLab CI/CD pipelines to improve consistency and reduce operational risk.
Manage the network configuration of Linux hosts: bonding and LACP, VLAN and bridge interfaces, jumbo frames, routing, and firewall rules.
Support the network side of storage and cloud platforms — for example, the fabric underpinning a Ceph cluster or the VLAN/VXLAN integration of a virtualization platform.
Safeguard availability by proactively monitoring infrastructure, responding to incidents, and resolving high-priority production issues.
Perform lifecycle management: software upgrades, hardware refresh cycles, OS patching of network-adjacent systems, and the controlled decommissioning of legacy infrastructure.
Standardize device and host configurations across production data centers and document the resulting baselines.
Implement and maintain firewall infrastructure and security policies to strengthen perimeter protection.
Maintain core network services such as DNS, DHCP, NTP and IP address management.

Projects you can expect

Data center migrations — planning, implementation and migration of network and host infrastructure with minimal service disruption.
Infrastructure as Code — building reusable Ansible components and roles for Juniper, MikroTik and Linux platforms.
Configuration standardization — bringing multiple production sites onto a single, version-controlled configuration standard.

The Role

Network Architect / Senior Lead-Data Center Networking, Automation & Linux Infrastructure

Requirements

Must-have

5+ years of hands-on experience as a network engineer in data center, hosting or service provider environments.
Strong practical knowledge of routing and switching: IPv6, BGP, OSPF, VXLAN, EVPN and high-availability designs.
Experience operating multi-vendor networks, including Juniper.
Solid Linux experience (Ubuntu/Debian and AlmaLinux or another RHEL derivative): installation, configuration, the networking stack, systemd services, package management and command-line troubleshooting.
Demonstrable automation experience with Ansible, including Git-based version control and CI/CD workflows (GitLab or equivalent).
Experience with firewalls and network security policy (FortiGate, Cisco ASA or comparable), including Linux-native firewalling (nftables/iptables).
Working knowledge of core network services: DNS, DHCP, NTP, PKI/certificates.
Comfortable working in production: incident response, change management, structured troubleshooting and clear post-incident documentation.
Good written and spoken English.

Nice to have

Experience with distributed storage systems, particularly Ceph (RBD, RGW, CephFS) and the network requirements that come with them.
Experience with cloud or virtualization platforms such as Apache CloudStack, OpenStack, Proxmox VE, or KVM/libvirt.
Linux load balancing and high availability: keepalived, HAProxy.
Container and orchestration exposure: Docker, Kubernetes, and an understanding of container networking (CNI, overlays).
Scripting and tooling in Python beyond Ansible; familiarity with NAPALM, Netmiko, PyEZ or similar libraries.
Familiarity with monitoring, observability and logging tooling such as Grafana, Prometheus, LibreNMS, Zabbix, or Loki/ELK.
IPAM/DCIM tooling such as NetBox, and structured documentation practices.
Experience with data center exit or large-scale migration projects.
Experience with DDoS detection and mitigation

Who you are

Structured and risk-aware: you plan changes, prepare rollbacks, and communicate before you touch production.
Automation-minded: you would rather fix the template than repeat the manual fix.
Collaborative across disciplines — you work well with systems, storage and platform engineers rather than treating the network as an island.
Able to work independently and take ownership of a problem end to end.

"Gapstars is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. We are an equal-opportunity employer and do not discriminate based on race, national origin, gender, disability, or age. Your personal information collected during the application process is handled following our privacy policy and used exclusively for recruitment and hiring purposes."