Senior Kubernetes Platform Engineer

Job Title: Senior Kubernetes Platform Engineer / Architect

Location: Milpitas, CA

Experience Required: 10-15+ Years Overall IT Experience with 5+ Years of Hands-on Kubernetes Platform Engineering

Position Overview

Seeking an experienced Kubernetes Platform Engineer / Architect to design, build, automate, and support enterprise-grade container platforms that power business-critical applications across global environments. The ideal candidate will have deep expertise in Kubernetes, container orchestration, cloud-native technologies, platform engineering, automation, observability, and DevOps practices.

This role will be responsible for developing a scalable, secure, and highly available Kubernetes ecosystem that enables application teams to rapidly deploy, manage, and modernize workloads. The candidate will work closely with cloud teams, infrastructure teams, application development teams, security teams, and SRE teams to deliver a robust cloud-native platform.

Key Responsibilities

Kubernetes Platform Architecture

• Design and implement enterprise Kubernetes platforms across cloud and hybrid environments.
• Define platform standards, governance controls, and architectural best practices.
• Build scalable, resilient, and highly available Kubernetes clusters.
• Develop container platform roadmaps aligned with cloud strategy.
• Establish multi-cluster and multi-region Kubernetes architectures.
• Support application modernization and cloud-native transformation initiatives.

Kubernetes Administration & Operations

• Deploy, upgrade, patch, and manage Kubernetes clusters.
• Perform cluster lifecycle management and capacity planning.
• Optimize cluster performance, resource utilization, and availability.
• Configure namespaces, RBAC, network policies, storage classes, and quota management.
• Troubleshoot complex platform, networking, storage, and container issues.
• Ensure platform reliability and operational excellence.

Containerization & Cloud-Native Solutions

• Design and implement containerized application environments.
• Support Docker and OCI-compliant container technologies.
• Develop best practices for:
  • Container security
  • Container lifecycle management
  • Image management
  • Registry management
• Enable microservices architecture adoption.
• Support modern cloud-native application deployments.

Platform Automation

• Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and GitOps practices.
• Automate Kubernetes provisioning and configuration management.
• Develop reusable deployment templates and platform services.
• Build self-service capabilities for development teams.
• Automate platform monitoring, compliance, and operational processes.

Tools:

• Terraform
• Ansible
• Helm
• ArgoCD
• FluxCD
• GitHub Actions
• Azure DevOps

DevOps & CI/CD Enablement

• Design and support CI/CD pipelines for Kubernetes workloads.
• Integrate Kubernetes with enterprise DevOps toolchains.
• Support continuous deployment and release automation.
• Improve deployment speed, reliability, and application availability.
• Establish standardized deployment frameworks.

Platforms:

• Azure DevOps
• GitHub Enterprise
• Jenkins
• GitLab CI/CD

Kubernetes Security

• Implement Kubernetes security best practices and governance controls.
• Configure and manage:
  • RBAC
  • Pod Security Standards
  • Network Policies
  • Secrets Management
  • Service Mesh Security
• Integrate security scanning into CI/CD pipelines.
• Support Zero Trust architecture initiatives.
• Conduct platform security assessments and remediation activities.

Security Technologies:

• HashiCorp Vault
• Aqua Security
• Prisma Cloud
• Microsoft Defender for Containers
• Trivy
• Falco

Service Mesh & Traffic Management

• Design and support service mesh implementations.
• Configure traffic routing, ingress controllers, and API gateways.
• Implement secure service-to-service communication.
• Enable application observability and resilience patterns.

Technologies:

• Istio
• Linkerd
• NGINX Ingress
• Kong
• Ambassador

Monitoring & Observability

• Build enterprise observability solutions for Kubernetes platforms.
• Implement centralized logging, monitoring, and alerting.
• Define SLOs, SLIs, and platform health metrics.
• Support Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices.

Monitoring Tools:

• Prometheus
• Grafana
• ELK Stack
• OpenTelemetry
• Datadog
• Splunk
• Dynatrace

Cloud Platform Integration

• Integrate Kubernetes with public cloud platforms.
• Design and manage managed Kubernetes services.

Cloud Platforms:

• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• Amazon EKS
• Google GKE

Preferred expertise in AKS due to Azure cloud strategy.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Serve as the Kubernetes subject matter expert.
• Provide technical leadership and architecture guidance.
• Mentor platform engineers and DevOps teams.
• Collaborate with application development, cloud, and security teams.
• Participate in architecture reviews and technology governance forums.

Required Qualifications

Education

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related discipline.
• Master's Degree preferred.

Experience

• 10-15+ years of overall IT experience.
• 5+ years of hands-on Kubernetes administration and platform engineering.
• Experience managing large-scale production Kubernetes environments.
• Experience implementing enterprise platform engineering practices.
• Strong experience supporting mission-critical applications.

Required Technical Skills

Kubernetes Ecosystem

• Kubernetes (K8s)
• Docker
• Helm
• Kustomize
• CRDs
• Operators
• Kubernetes Networking
• Kubernetes Security
• Service Mesh

Cloud Platforms

• Microsoft Azure
• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
• AWS EKS
• Google GKE

Infrastructure Automation

• Terraform
• Ansible
• PowerShell
• Python
• Bash

GitOps & CI/CD

• ArgoCD
• FluxCD
• Azure DevOps
• GitHub Actions
• Jenkins

Monitoring & Logging

• Prometheus
• Grafana
• OpenTelemetry
• ELK Stack
• Splunk
• Dynatrace

Networking

• TCP/IP
• DNS
• Ingress Controllers
• Service Mesh
• Load Balancers
• Network Policies
• API Gateways

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in semiconductor manufacturing or high-tech enterprise environments.
• Experience supporting engineering and R&D workloads.
• Experience with AI/ML platform deployments on Kubernetes.
• Experience implementing platform engineering and Internal Developer Platforms (IDP).
• Familiarity with OpenShift and Rancher environments.
• Experience with GPU-based Kubernetes workloads.
• Knowledge of FinOps and Kubernetes cost optimization.

Preferred Certifications

Required

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)

Preferred

• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
• Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator (AZ-104)
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305)
• Azure DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400)
• HashiCorp Terraform Associate