Site Reliability Engineer

Role: Site Reliability Engineer

Location:  Remote.  Candidates can live anywhere in the US but must be able to work 8am – 5pm/9am – 6pm EST

Pay Rate $ 70/hr on W2

Duration:6 to 12 Months

Interview Process:  Teams interview with manager, then teams interview with additional team members

Duration:  6 months, possible extension based on business need 

Top requirements: Bachelors is preferred but not required. Minimum of 5 years professional experience in site reliability engineering, platform engineering, DevOps, or systems engineering roles. Candidates must have 5 years strong system administration with Linux! Rancher for Kubernetes experience is a must. 

Role Overview

Join Corning’s Model Operations and Deployment Engineering team at their flagship research facility, where your work will directly support groundbreaking materials science innovations. In this role, you will help maintain, enhance, and evolve the Kubernetes platforms that enable scientific and engineering teams to deploy, operate, and scale critical applications across both on-premises and cloud environments.

Corning is looking for an experienced contract Site Reliability Engineer who can strengthen our team’s platform engineering and operational capabilities. You will play a key role in supporting Kubernetes infrastructure managed through Rancher, improving system reliability and automation, and advancing infrastructure-as-code and GitOps practices across our environment. 

Key Responsibilities

•          Platform Operations: Maintain and enhance Kubernetes platforms across on-premises and cloud environments, ensuring reliability, scalability, and operational efficiency.

•          Cluster Management: Support provisioning, upgrades, troubleshooting, and lifecycle management of Kubernetes clusters managed through Rancher.

•          Linux Systems Administration: Provide deep technical expertise in Linux-based systems, including performance tuning, troubleshooting, automation, and operational support.

•          Infrastructure as Code: Develop and maintain infrastructure-as-code solutions to standardize and automate platform deployment and management, with a preference for Cluster API (CAPI)-based approaches.

•          GitOps and Deployment Automation: Support and improve GitOps workflows using ArgoCD to manage cluster and application configuration in a consistent, auditable manner.

•          Collaboration: Work closely with developers, scientists, and infrastructure teams to deliver reliable platform services and translate operational needs into sustainable engineering solutions.

•          Continuous Improvement: Identify opportunities to improve platform resilience, observability, security, and maintainability through automation and modern SRE practices.

Required:

Education: BS in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or related field preferred; or equivalent professional experience.                

Experience:

•          5+ years of professional experience in site reliability engineering, platform engineering, DevOps, or systems engineering roles.

•          Hands-on experience operating and supporting Kubernetes platforms in production environments.

•          Strong experience managing Kubernetes clusters in both on-premises and cloud-based environments.

•          Strong Linux systems administration skills, including troubleshooting, scripting, networking, and system performance analysis.

•          Experience with Rancher for Kubernetes cluster management and platform operations.

•          Experience implementing infrastructure-as-code solutions for platform provisioning and lifecycle management.

•          Demonstrated success working in Agile teams (Scrum, Kanban). 

Technical Skills:

•          Kubernetes: Cluster operations, upgrades, networking, storage, troubleshooting, and workload support.

•          Platform Management: Rancher or similar Kubernetes management platforms.

•          Linux: Advanced administration of Linux/Unix systems.

•          Infrastructure as Code: Strong IaC experience; Cluster API (CAPI) preferred.

•          GitOps/CI-CD: ArgoCD, Git version control, and deployment automation practices.

•          Scripting/Automation: Bash, Python, or similar scripting languages for automation and operational tooling. 

Preferred:

•          Experience with hybrid infrastructure spanning on-premises and public cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform).

•          Experience with Kubernetes ecosystem tooling for observability, logging, monitoring, and alerting.

•          Familiarity with security best practices for Kubernetes and Linux platforms.

•          Experience supporting scientific research environments, high-performance computing, or computational science workflows.

•          Knowledge of CI/CD pipeline development and platform automation patterns