Kubernetes Platform Engineer

Job summary

Build, operate, and troubleshoot production Kubernetes platforms for mission-critical and GPU-accelerated AI/ML workloads across on-premise, air-gapped, and hybrid environments. The role focuses on RKE2 and SUSE Rancher management, NVIDIA GPU Operator and Istio operations, and infrastructure automation with Terraform and Ansible. It also covers CI/CD and GitOps delivery, platform security and observability, upgrades, backup and disaster recovery, and customer-facing technical support.

Qualifications

• At least 5 years of hands-on IT experience, including 3 or more years administering Kubernetes in production
• Strong Kubernetes troubleshooting skills using kubectl, events, logs, crictl, and node-level tools
• Ability to diagnose networking, DNS, storage, scheduling, certificate, and control-plane issues and document root-cause findings
• Hands-on experience setting up and operating Rancher Manager
• Experience operating NVIDIA GPU Operator, preferably on RKE2
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines, GitOps tools, Helm, and Kustomize
• Hands-on experience with Istio service mesh
• Experience with Terraform and Ansible
• Linux administration experience and networking fundamentals
• Experience with Prometheus, Grafana, and centralized logging
• Strong Bash scripting; Python or Go experience is an advantage
• Experience in on-premise enterprise environments, including air-gapped setups
• Ability to work independently in customer-facing roles
• Advanced English; Arabic is an advantage
• Knowledge of RKE2, Rancher, and SUSE Virtualization; hands-on experience is strongly preferred

Responsibilities

• Install, configure, and operate production RKE2 clusters across on-premise, air-gapped, and hybrid environments
• Operate highly available SUSE Rancher Manager, including upgrades, backup and restore, authentication, RBAC, and downstream cluster management
• Automate infrastructure provisioning and configuration with Terraform and Ansible
• Troubleshoot cluster and platform issues across nodes, networking, DNS, ingress, storage, certificates, etcd, and the control plane
• Deploy and operate NVIDIA GPU Operator on RKE2, including drivers, container toolkit, device plugin, GPU Feature Discovery, and DCGM monitoring
• Configure GPU sharing with MIG and time-slicing and support AI/ML workloads on GPU nodes
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines with GitLab CI, Jenkins, or GitHub Actions
• Implement GitOps with Rancher Fleet, Argo CD, or Flux
• Manage workloads with Helm and Kustomize
• Deploy and operate Istio, including traffic management, gateways, mTLS, authorization policies, and troubleshooting
• Operate SUSE Virtualization (Harvester) for virtual machines and RKE2 guest clusters
• Implement monitoring, logging, and alerting with Prometheus, Grafana, and Rancher tools
• Harden clusters using CIS benchmarks, Pod Security Admission, network policies, and secrets management
• Plan and execute Kubernetes, RKE2, and Rancher upgrades with minimal downtime
• Design and test backup and disaster recovery, including etcd snapshots, Rancher backups, and workload backups
• Maintain runbooks, playbooks, and platform documentation
• Conduct technical knowledge-transfer and training sessions
• Work with customer stakeholders during on-site engagements

Skills

Certifications

Degrees

Languages

Travel

Industry

Relocation