DevOps Engineer at SOUM (Egypt)
SOUM· Egypt·
Role details
Job description
About Us
Soum is on a mission to revolutionize e-commerce in the MENA region and beyond by building the most convenient and trustworthy re-commerce marketplace in the region. We're reshaping how C2C marketplaces operate, making buying and selling second-hand products seamless and reliable. Since our launch in July 2021, Soum has become one of the fastest-growing startups in the region, achieving rapid expansion in both our team and product offerings. In recognition of our impact and growth, we were proudly named one of the Top 10 LinkedIn Startups in Saudi Arabia for 2024.
Overview
We are looking for a DevOps Engineer interested in building performant, stable and resilient infrastructure. You will be responsible for architecting and building the infrastructure, as well as coordinating with the teams responsible for other layers of the product infrastructure. Building a stable infrastructure is a highly collaborative effort, and as such, a strong team player with a commitment to perfection is required.
Role & Responsibilities
- Take responsibility for the scalability, stability and availability of our low-latency and mission-critical systems.
- Enhance the CI/CD pipeline using GitHub Actions.
- Generate and maintain Helm manifests for Kubernetes.
- Maintain our Infrastructure as Code.
- Set up and maintain monitoring via New Relic, Prometheus and Grafana.
- Debug infrastructure and detect bottlenecks.
- Take responsibility for the company-wide tech infrastructure across all environments.
- Manage VPN, load balancers and firewalls.
- Take responsibility for high availability and disaster recovery.
- Implement secure and stable infrastructure.
- Drive continuous improvement and cost optimization.
- Take responsibility for 24x7 monitoring, resolving infrastructure-tier incidents and escalating to upper tiers where necessary.
- Investigate incidents and produce clear incident report documentation.
Skills
- Excellent understanding of GCP cloud and AWS cloud.
- Knowledge of containerized environments with Kubernetes and Docker.
- Ability to develop a well-managed infrastructure setup.
- Strong hands-on experience building high availability infrastructure using EKS on AWS.
- Strong understanding of IaC, specifically Terraform.
- Strong understanding of GitOps, specifically ArgoCD.
- Strong understanding of securing production infrastructure.
Qualifications
- Minimum 2 years of experience in DevOps on production applications.
- Minimum 1 year working with Terraform.
- Minimum 1 year working with infrastructure monitoring tools.
- Experience in designing and architecting high performing applications.
- Experience in agile development practices.
- Experience in a fast growing startup is a plus.
- AWS certifications are a plus.
Why work at SOUM
- Culture: Soum describes itself as looking for "innovators, the hungry, the go-getters" and offers autonomy to experiment, learn, fail, and grow. The team is called "Soumers" and has worked across 14+ countries from the US to South Korea.
- Remote/Hybrid Policy: Mixed. Many roles are remote (e.g., Cairo-based positions), but some roles (e.g., Senior Compliance Officer, Operations roles) are on-site in Riyadh or Jeddah. The company has offices in Riyadh and Cairo.
- Global & Diverse Team: 90 employees spread across 8 countries (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, UAE, South Korea, Nigeria, Uzbekistan, US). Engineering and product teams are distributed.
- Engineering Culture: AI/ML is core to the product; they deploy models for recommendations, dynamic pricing, predictive analytics, and fraud detection. The technical team makes up ~12% of headcount.
- Growth Trajectory: High-growth startup (10%+ YoY headcount growth, expanding geographies and categories) offering significant ownership and impact.
- Compensation: Senior Software Engineer roles reported at ~SAR 128,877/month. Overall employer rating is 3.7/5 (19 reviews on LinkedIn), with Culture rated 3.6 and Career growth rated 3.5.
- AI in Hiring: Soum discloses that they use AI tools to support parts of the hiring process (reviewing applications, analyzing resumes, identifying signals), but final decisions are made by humans.