Principal Cloud Kubernetes Engineer

We are seeking a Principal Cloud Kubernetes Engineer to join our global infrastructure team to lead the architecture, strategy, and evolution of our cloud-native platform across public cloud and on-premises environments. This role serves as the organization’s technical authority for Kubernetes, platform engineering, automation, and cloud infrastructure, driving platform scalability, reliability, security, and developer experience.

The Principal Engineer will work across infrastructure, application development, security, and operations teams to establish standards, guide architecture decisions, and deliver highly automated self-service platforms supporting mission-critical workloads.

Key Responsibilities

Platform Architecture & Strategy

• Define and maintain the Kubernetes platform roadmap and cloud-native strategy.
• Architect multi-cluster, multi-region, and multi-cloud Kubernetes platforms supporting enterprise-scale 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.

Kubernetes Platform Engineering

• Design, deploy, and operate enterprise Kubernetes platforms using EKS, AKS, GKE, Rancher, Spectro Cloud Palette, or equivalent technologies.
• Define cluster lifecycle management processes including provisioning, upgrades, patching, and decommissioning.
• Architect multi-tenant Kubernetes environments with strong 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.

Infrastructure Automation & Platform as Code

• Lead adoption of Infrastructure as Code and GitOps methodologies across engineering teams.
• 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.

Cloud Infrastructure & Hybrid Operations

• 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.

Reliability Engineering & Observability

• Define enterprise observability standards and platform reliability objectives.
• Establish SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets for critical platform services.
• Architect monitoring, logging, tracing, and alerting solutions using Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Loki, and related technologies.
• Lead root cause analysis efforts for major incidents and drive systemic improvements.
• Develop resiliency testing, chaos engineering, and disaster recovery validation programs.

Security & Compliance

• Establish Kubernetes security architecture and cloud security standards.
• Lead implementation of policy-as-code frameworks using Kyverno, OPA/Gatekeeper, and admission controllers.
• Define workload identity, secrets management, and zero-trust platform strategies.
• Partner with security teams to satisfy regulatory, audit, and compliance requirements.
• Drive secure software supply chain initiatives including image signing, SBOM validation, and runtime protection.

Technical Leadership

• Serve as the highest-level Kubernetes and platform engineering subject matter expert.
• Lead architecture reviews and provide technical guidance across multiple engineering teams.
• Mentor senior engineers and influence engineering excellence across the organization.
• Drive cross-functional initiatives involving platform engineering, DevOps, SRE, security, and application teams.
• Contribute to organizational technology strategy and long-term infrastructure planning.

Required 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.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Rancher, Spectro Cloud Palette, Crossplane, Backstage, or other platform engineering solutions.
• Experience designing Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs).
• Experience with OpenTelemetry and distributed tracing architectures.
• Experience implementing software supply chain security controls.
• Experience managing regulated or highly compliant environments.
• Active participation in Kubernetes or CNCF open-source communities.
• Experience presenting architecture guidance to executive leadership and technical stakeholders.

Preferred Certifications

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
• Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer – Professional
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
• Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer
• Azure DevOps Engineer Expert
• HashiCorp Terraform Associate
• Linux Foundation Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist
• CNCF Kubestronaut Program Certifications

We are an equal-opportunity employer and do not discriminate because of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, age, disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression or any other legally protected category. InterSystems is an E-Verify Employer in the United States.