Lead Cloud Engineer (Kubernetes/AWS)

Lead Cloud Engineer (Kubernetes/AWS)

Salary: Open + Bonus

Location: Chicago, IL or Coppell, TX

Hybrid: 3 days onsite, 2 days remote

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree
• 7+ years experience in IT systems installation, operations, administration, and maintenance of cloud systems / virtualized servers, with demonstrated significant experience in Kubernetes and container orchestration platforms
• Production-level hands-on experience with AWS cloud services and implementing Kubernetes on AWS (EKS or self-managed clusters)
• Extensive experience with Infrastructure as Code using Terraform for provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure and Kubernetes resources
• Strong hands-on development skills with demonstrable coding experience in Go or Python (Go strongly preferred for Kubernetes operator/controller development). Candidates must be able to provide specific examples of production code they have written.
• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes ecosystem tools including: Helm, kubectl, container runtimes (containerd, CRI-O), and monitoring/observability tools
• Experience with CI/CD tools such as Jenkins, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions.
• Experience with version control using GitHub or similar platforms
• Experience with configuration management tools such as Ansible, Puppet, or Chef
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes architecture, container orchestration, and cloud-native infrastructure design and components, such as: etcd, networking, storage, and container runtimes
• Extensive hands-on experience with Kubernetes cluster creation, maintenance, support, and administration in production environments
• Deep understanding and practical implementation experience with Kubernetes networking (CNI plugins, service types, ingress controllers), runtime security (Pod Security Standards, OPA/Gatekeeper, network policies), and Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
• Experience with architecting, implementing and maintaining highly available mission critical Kubernetes environments for 24/7 availability

Bonus Points

• Hands-on experience with Kubernetes operator/controller development using operator frameworks (Kubebuilder, Operator SDK, or similar). This can be demonstrated through either contributions to open-source Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) projects, OR Development of in-house Kubernetes operators/controllers. Note: If you have contributed to open-source CNCF projects, please include your GitHub profile link or links to notable Pull Requests in your resume.

Responsibilities

• Reports to the Director of Platform Automation and Cloud Engineering
• Design, configure, implement and manage Kubernetes clusters and maintain a fully automated workflow for provisioning and managing a complex, highly available container orchestration environment using infrastructure as code
• Develop and maintain Kubernetes operators, controllers, and custom resources to extend cluster functionality and automate application lifecycle management
• Manage DevOps development activities and complex development tasks that will involve working with tools such as Docker, Kafka, container runtimes, and Kubernetes ecosystem tools
• Lead and participate in Kubernetes cluster build-outs, upgrades, software installation, maintenance and support, including but not limited to, patches, security fixes, end-of-life preparation, and version upgrades
• Implement and manage Kubernetes networking solutions, service mesh architectures, runtime security policies, and RBAC configurations to ensure secure and efficient cluster operations