About Telesat
Telesat is a leading global satellite operator, providing reliable and secure satellite-delivered communications solutions worldwide to broadcast, telecommunications, corporate and government customers. Backed by a legacy of engineering excellence, reliability and industry-leading customer service, Telesat has grown to be one of the largest and most successful global satellite operators.
About the Role
We are seeking a Senior DevOps Engineer to own and evolve the cloud infrastructure and CI/CD platform for Telesat's Lightspeed satellite constellation. You will be responsible for the reliability, scalability, and automation of our Azure-based deployment platform, supporting a multi-technology monorepo (Java, Python, TypeScript, MATLAB) serving multiple development teams.
Responsibilities
- Cloud Infrastructure (Azure): Design, provision, and manage Azure cloud resources — primarily Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), networking, storage, and identity — ensuring high availability and cost efficiency for satellite mission-critical workloads.
- Infrastructure as Code: Author and maintain Terraform modules to provision and manage all cloud environments (dev, staging, production), following DRY principles and modular design.
- CI/CD Pipeline Engineering: Own and extend GitLab CI/CD pipelines (merge request pipelines, merge trains, nightly builds, deployment workflows) across a polyglot monorepo. Ensure fast, reliable feedback loops for Java (Gradle), Python (Poetry/pytest), Matlab, and TypeScript (npm workspaces/Vite) build targets.
- Containerization & Orchestration: Maintain Docker images, Helm charts, and Kubernetes manifests. Manage AKS cluster lifecycle including upgrades, scaling policies, and namespace isolation.
- Automation & Scripting: Write and maintain Bash/Python scripts for deployment automation, environment provisioning, secret rotation, and developer tooling (pre-commit hooks, quality gates).
- Observability: Operate and improve the monitoring stack (Grafana, Prometheus, Loki) to provide actionable dashboards, alerting, and log aggregation across all services.
- Security: Implement and enforce cloud security best practices — network policies, RBAC, secret management, vulnerability scanning, and compliance controls for satellite communication systems.
- Collaboration: Work closely with backend, frontend, QA, and MATLAB engineering teams to unblock deployments, improve developer experience, and maintain platform reliability.
- Documentation: Maintain runbooks, architecture decision records, and onboarding guides for infrastructure and deployment processes.
Required Qualifications
- 5+ years of professional DevOps / Cloud / Platform Engineering experience
- Azure (AKS, Virtual Networks, Key Vault, Storage, Entra ID) — hands-on production experience
- Terraform — writing, reviewing, and managing modular IaC at scale
- GitLab CI/CD — advanced pipeline design (includes, templates, merge trains, multi-project pipelines)
- Kubernetes — cluster administration, Helm, troubleshooting pod/network issues
- Docker — building optimized images, multi-stage builds, registry management
- Linux — strong command-line proficiency, shell scripting
- Git — branching strategies, merge conflict resolution, monorepo workflows
Nice to Have
- Observability tooling: Grafana, Prometheus, Loki (dashboards, alerting rules, log queries)
- Configuration management: Ansible
- Artifact management: JFrog Artifactory (Docker, Maven, PyPI registries)
- Experience with pre-commit frameworks and developer experience tooling
- Familiarity with satellite/aerospace or other regulated/mission-critical domains
- Experience supporting polyglot monorepos (Java + Python + TypeScript in one repository)
Performance Expectations
- Ability to work autonomously and able to hit the ground running within the first month
- Must be able to work with others and be an effective communicator
Work Environment
- Location: 160 Elgin St Suite 2100, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K2P 2P7
- On site (downtown Ottawa)
- 4 days will be in office (Wednesday will be a work from home option)
Skills Required
- 5+ years of professional DevOps / Cloud / Platform Engineering experience
- Azure (AKS, Virtual Networks, Key Vault, Storage, Entra ID) hands-on production experience
- Terraform — writing, reviewing, and managing modular IaC at scale
- GitLab CI/CD — advanced pipeline design (includes, templates, merge trains, multi-project pipelines)
- Kubernetes — cluster administration, Helm, troubleshooting pod/network issues
- Docker — building optimized images, multi-stage builds, registry management
- Linux — strong command-line proficiency and shell scripting
- Git — branching strategies, merge conflict resolution, monorepo workflows
- Scripting and automation with Bash and Python for deployments and tooling
- CI/CD support for polyglot monorepos and build tooling (Java/Gradle, Python/Poetry/pytest, TypeScript/npm/Vite, MATLAB)
- Observability tooling: Grafana, Prometheus, Loki
- Configuration management: Ansible
- Artifact management: JFrog Artifactory (Docker, Maven, PyPI registries)
- Experience with pre-commit frameworks and developer experience tooling
- Familiarity with satellite/aerospace or other regulated/mission-critical domains
- Ability to work autonomously and strong communication/collaboration skills
What We Do
Backed by a legacy of engineering excellence, reliability, and industry-leading customer service, Telesat is one of the largest and most successful global satellite operators. Telesat works collaboratively with its customers to deliver critical connectivity solutions that tackle the world’s most complex communications challenges, providing powerful advantages that improve their operations and drive profitable growth. Continuously innovating to meet the connectivity demands of the future, Telesat Lightspeed, the company’s Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite network, will be the first and only LEO network optimized to meet the rigorous requirements of telecom, government, maritime and aeronautical customers. Telesat Lightspeed will redefine global satellite connectivity with ubiquitous, affordable, high-capacity links with fiber-like speeds.
