Project Description
The project will improve and add new features to the internal developer portal (Forge/Backstage) and extend its orchestration capabilities by integrating and leveraging Crossplane as the infrastructure control plane. Key activities include:

• Designing and implementing Crossplane XRDs/compositions and GitOps pipelines to enable declarative provisioning of infrastructure and applications from the portal.
• Enhancing Forge/Backstage with new UI features, templates and plugins so the portal can create or update Crossplane manifests and surface reconciliation status and progress to users.
• Extending orchestration in the portal to support multistep (parallel and sequential) workflows, delegating longrunning operations to Crossplane, and reducing template API-call complexity.
• Configuring and securing EKS clusters (RBAC/IAM) and providing access patterns for users/NPAs, plus hardening cluster operations required by Crossplane.
• Implementing observability (Prometheus/Grafana/OpenTelemetry) with dashboards, metrics collection and alerting for Crossplane controllers and EKS.
• Implementing ETCD and cluster backup/DR procedures, executing restore tests, and producing SOPs and runbooks.
• Developing backend integrations and microservices, building portal UI components, and implementing CI/CD and DevSecOps practices to support Crossplane workflows.
• Producing documentation, onboarding materials and knowledge-transfer sessions, and providing operational handover support.

Expected staffing: two platform engineers will join the DevXOps Platform team to work on Crossplane, and two software engineers will join the Forge team to work on the portal.

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Scope

Crossplane:
Onboard, operate and extend Crossplane as the infrastructure control plane so platform teams can provision and manage infrastructure declaratively and GitOps-style.

Minimum supplier requirements:

• Advanced Kubernetes (EKS), Prometheus/Grafana/OpenTelemetry, Terraform and AWS experience
• Strong Git/GitOps skills
• Ability to work CET hours (preferably Prague)

In-scope:

• Align Crossplane XRDs/CRs with user requirements and existing Git repo functionality
• Implement GitOps CI/CD for Crossplane manifests and Crossplane-managed application and infrastructure deployments
• Provide EKS access model (RBAC/IAM) and secure cluster configuration
• Implement monitoring (Prometheus/Grafana/OTel), dashboards and alerts for Crossplane controllers and managed resources
• Design, implement and validate backup/DR for EKS (including ETCD); deliver SOPs, runbooks and onboarding materials
• Deliver documentation, tests in staging, and operational handover

Performance expectations:

• Feature parity with current provisioning where applicable, repeatable GitOps deployments, validated monitoring and successful DR tests; weekly updates and demos

Forge (Backstage):
Integrate Forge with Crossplane so Forge/Backstage orchestrates provisioning flows while delegating lifecycle and state reconciliation to Crossplane, improving developer UX and reducing template complexity.

Minimum requirements:

• JavaScript/TypeScript, React, NodeJS and PostgreSQL experience
• Familiarity with Backstage/Forge integration patterns and CI/CD

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