DevOps Engineer

Merkle powers the experience economy. For more than 35 years, the company has put people at the heart of its approach to digital business transformation. As the only integrated experience consultancy in the world with a heritage in data science and business performance, Merkle delivers holistic, end-to-end experiences that drive growth, engagement, and loyalty. With more than 16,000 employees, Merkle operates in 30+ countries throughout the Americas, EMEA, and APAC.

In Bulgaria, we manage a global portfolio of clients, providing a single source of expertise, technology, and operational support. We have a proven track record for delivering, managing, and innovating multi-channel commerce platforms for major international brands and retailers, including adidas, Clarins, ASDA, Shiseido, and more. Our world-class team has delivered sites for over 35 brands, with more than 400 transactional e-commerce sites in 60 locations across 6 continents. Our scope is expanding with the introduction of new data engineering practices, paid search, social advertising, and SEO. We look forward to what’s next.

We’re hiring a DevOps Engineer as part of Merkle in Sofia.

About the role:

We are seeking a hands-on Data DevOps Engineer to help design, build, and operate modern data platforms on AWS. You’ll combine strong cloud engineering skills with DevOps best practices to automate and optimise every aspect of data delivery from infrastructure provisioning to pipeline deployment and monitoring.

You’ll work closely with our data engineers, architects, and data scientists to build secure, scalable, and observable solutions that underpin some of the most data-driven brands in the UK.

Life as a DevOps Engineer at Merkle:

In this role, you will have the opportunity to work with clients from a wide range of sectors, understand their specific requirements, liaise with a full range of services provided by Merkle and design, develop and deliver technical solutions. You will typically work with a few clients across various stages of maturity, allowing for variety in your work and the opportunity to acquire new skills as needed.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and implement DevOps pipelines to automate data ingestion, transformation, testing, and deployment across environments.
• Develop Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) using Terraform, CloudFormation or CDK to provision AWS data and analytics services.
• Own CI/CD processes for data applications — managing build, test, release and rollback automation using GitHub Actions, Jenkins or equivalent.
• Implement monitoring and observability across AWS workloads using CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana or Datadog.
• Manage containerisation using Docker and ECS for consistent, portable environments.
• Drive reliability and scalability in data platform operations (Data Lake, Glue, Lambda, Redshift, S3, Step Functions).
• Champion DevSecOps principles — ensuring security, compliance, and auditability are embedded in every deployment.
• Collaborate across disciplines with architects, analysts, and delivery managers to design robust and supportable data products.
• Mentor junior engineers in automation, version control, and operational excellence.

What we’re looking for:

Essential Skills:

• Proven experience building and supporting AWS-based data or analytics platforms.
• Deep knowledge of CI/CD pipelines and IaC (Terraform, CloudFormation, CDK).
• Strong background in automation scripting (Python, Bash, PowerShell).
• Solid understanding of containerisation and orchestration (Docker, ECS, EKS).
• Familiarity with data engineering concepts — ETL orchestration, S3 processing, Lambda functions, data quality automation.
• Strong experience with GitHub / GitLab workflows, branching strategies and deployment governance.
• Knowledge of AWS monitoring & alerting — CloudWatch, CloudTrail, SNS/SQS.
• Agile delivery mindset with focus on continuous improvement, observability and reliability.

Desirable:

• Experience implementing DataOps / MLOps pipelines in cloud environments.
• Familiarity with event-driven architectures (SNS, SQS, Lambda, Kinesis).
• Experience with Redshift, Aurora or RDS, including automated schema – or multi-region deployments.

Benefits:

• We are huge believers in work-life balance, so we offer all our employees 25 days of paid leave and 3 fixed wellness days off per year.
• A hybrid work model for our teams so they can work from the office or the comfort of their home.
• Free parking spaces are available for all employees working from the office.
• Complimentary drinks and snacks are available in the office to help keep energy levels up.
• A parent-friendly culture and the potential for additional days off to create new memories with your loved ones.
• Life Insurance, Health and dental insurance plan or, if selected, gift vouchers instead.
• Sports card, partially covered by the company and food vouchers.
• 2 days off for volunteering and numerous charity initiatives throughout the year.
• Opportunity to attend training, conferences, and receive certification sponsored by the company, subject to availability and business need.

About dentsu:

Taking a people-centred approach to business transformation, we use insights to connect brand, content, commerce and experience, underpinned by modern creativity. As part of Dentsu Group Inc., we are headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, and our 65,000 employee base of dedicated professionals work across four regions (Japan, Americas, EMEA and APAC). Dentsu combines Japanese innovation with a diverse, global perspective to drive client growth and to shape society.