What are the responsibilities and job description for the Platform & DevOps Engineer position at Kalmbach Feeds, Inc.?
Platform & DevOps Engineer (Hybrid)
Location: Upper Sandusky, OH (The "Reverse Commute" – 25 mins from Findlay/Marion)
Work Style: Hybrid (Targeting 2 days in-office for deep collaboration)
Tech Stack: Azure, Kubernetes, FluxCD, OpenTofu/Terraform, GitHub Actions
The Opportunity: High-Tech Impact in the Heart of Ohio
Forget the "big tech" grind and the soul-crushing traffic of I-71. At Kalmbach Feeds, we are proof that world-class engineering happens in the 419. We are looking for a Platform Engineer to be the architect of our digital foundation. You won’t just be a ticket-taker; you will be the one building the GitOps pipelines and Kubernetes environments that power a regional leader in animal nutrition.
Why this role is different:
- Modern Stack, Zero Legacy Debt: We use FluxCD, OpenTofu, and OpenTelemetry. You’re coming into an environment that values "doing it right" over "doing it fast."
- The "Reverse Commute": Located in Upper Sandusky, we offer an easy, traffic-free drive for those living in Findlay, Marion, Tiffin, or Delaware. Spend your "commute" listening to a podcast, not staring at brake lights.
- Direct Impact: Your work directly ensures that millions of animals are fed efficiently. In a world of "apps for apps," we build technology that supports the physical world.
What You’ll Own (The 2026 Roadmap):
- GitOps Mastery: You will lead our shift toward GitOps-based workflows using FluxCD, ensuring our deployments are version-controlled, repeatable, and boring (in a good way).
- K8s Orchestration: Manage and scale our Kubernetes clusters on Azure, optimizing for both performance and cost-efficiency.
- Developer Experience (DevEx): Partner with our software teams to remove friction. If a developer has to do something manually twice, you’re the one who automates it.
- Infrastructure as Code: Maintain our environment using OpenTofu/Terraform and Ansible, treating our infrastructure with the same rigor as our application code.
- Observability: Implement OpenTelemetry and Grafana to give us 20/20 vision into system health before issues become outages.
Who You Are:
- The "Automation First" Mindset: You have 2+ years of experience in DevOps or Platform Engineering. You find manual tasks offensive.
- Cloud Native: You are comfortable in Azure (or AWS/GCP with a willingness to pivot) and understand the nuances of cloud-scale networking and security.
- The Container Expert: You don't just "use" Docker; you understand how Kubernetes manages state and scaling in a hybrid environment.
- Collaborative Architect: You can explain complex infrastructure to a developer and work alongside them to solve a performance bottleneck.