Principal Cloud Kubernetes Engineer

Job summary

Lead the architecture, strategy, and evolution of cloud-native platforms across public cloud and on-premises environments. Serve as the technical authority for Kubernetes, platform engineering, automation, and cloud infrastructure, driving platform scalability, reliability, security, and developer experience. Establish standards, guide architecture decisions, and deliver highly automated self-service platforms supporting mission-critical workloads.

Benefits

Qualifications

• 12+ years of infrastructure, cloud engineering, DevOps, SRE, or platform engineering experience.
• 7+ years of hands-on Kubernetes experience in production environments.
• Deep expertise designing and operating Kubernetes platforms at enterprise scale.
• Strong experience with cloud platforms including AWS, Azure, and/or GCP.
• Advanced experience with GitOps methodologies and tools such as Argo CD, Flux, and Fleet.
• Expert-level Terraform experience and Infrastructure as Code practices.
• Strong understanding of Kubernetes internals including: Control plane architecture, Scheduling, Networking, Service discovery, Storage, Security.
• Experience with service mesh technologies including Istio, Linkerd, or Consul.
• Expertise in Kubernetes networking, CNI implementations, and eBPF technologies such as Cilium.
• Strong programming experience with Go, Python, or similar languages.
• Experience building platform automation, operators, controllers, or Kubernetes extensions.
• Experience with enterprise identity integration using OIDC, SAML, LDAP, and cloud-native identity services.
• Experience with Rancher, Spectro Cloud Palette, Crossplane, Backstage, or other platform engineering solutions (Preferred).
• Experience designing Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) (Preferred).
• Experience with OpenTelemetry and distributed tracing architectures (Preferred).
• Experience implementing software supply chain security controls (Preferred).
• Experience managing regulated or highly compliant environments (Preferred).
• Active participation in Kubernetes or CNCF open-source communities (Preferred).
• Experience presenting architecture guidance to executive leadership and technical stakeholders (Preferred).

Responsibilities

• Define and maintain the Kubernetes platform roadmap and cloud-native strategy.
• Architect multi-cluster, multi-region, and multi-cloud Kubernetes platforms for enterprise workloads.
• Establish platform engineering standards, reference architectures, and operational best practices.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and provide technical guidance on platform modernization initiatives.
• Lead technical decision-making for container orchestration, platform automation, and cloud infrastructure investments.
• Design, deploy, and operate enterprise Kubernetes platforms using EKS, AKS, GKE, Rancher, Spectro Cloud Palette, or equivalent.
• Define cluster lifecycle management processes including provisioning, upgrades, patching, and decommissioning.
• Architect multi-tenant Kubernetes environments with isolation, governance, and compliance controls.
• Design Kubernetes networking architectures leveraging Cilium, Calico, service mesh technologies, and eBPF-based observability.
• Establish cluster security baselines and platform governance standards.
• Lead adoption of Infrastructure as Code and GitOps methodologies.
• Develop reusable Terraform modules, Helm charts, and platform automation frameworks.
• Design self-service provisioning capabilities for Kubernetes clusters, environments, and application onboarding.
• Implement Kubernetes Operators, controllers, and automation frameworks to eliminate operational toil.
• Define platform engineering patterns enabling rapid and consistent infrastructure delivery.
• Architect Kubernetes solutions spanning AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-premises environments.
• Design resilient multi-region and disaster recovery architectures.
• Lead cloud infrastructure modernization initiatives and workload migrations.
• Define backup, recovery, business continuity, and platform resiliency strategies.
• Establish storage architectures using Portworx, CSI drivers, OpenEBS, or cloud-native storage services.

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Certifications

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Industry

Relocation