Rancher Architect

Employment Eligibility Statement

Due to specific project and client requirements, this position is open to U.S. Citizens and U.S. Lawful Permanent Residents (s). Sponsorship is not available at this time.

Danta Technologies evaluates all candidates in compliance with the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and EEOC guidelines. All hiring decisions are made without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.

Position : Rancher & Kubernetes SME
Location : Princeton - NJ - 08540
Contract : 6+ months & extendable

Pay rate - $55/hr on W2/Danta Technologies payroll (OR) $67/hr on C2C-Corporation-To-Corporation

We are looking for candidates with a minimum of 15+ years of experience for this position (mandatory requirement).

Qualifications:

• Design and implement Rancher-managed Kubernetes clusters (RKE, RKE2, K3s, EKS, AKS, GKE).
• Architect high availability (HA) Rancher setups.
• Define multi-cluster and multi-tenant strategies using Rancher projects, namespaces, and RBAC.
• Integrate Kubernetes with VMware, Bare Metal, and Cloud platforms.
• Establish standardized cluster blueprints and reference architectures.
• Act as final escalation (L3) for Kubernetes and Rancher incidents.
• Diagnose and resolve Control plane failures
  • etcd performance and corruption issues
  • Pod scheduling and node pressure issues
  • CNI (Calico / Cilium) networking problems
  • CSI storage failures (Ceph, Longhorn, EBS, Azure Disk, NFS)
• Perform root cause analysis (RCA) and provide preventive recommendations.
• Install, upgrade, and maintain Rancher Server.
• Manage cluster lifecycles using Rancher UI & APIs.
• Implement and manage Rancher RBAC, Authentication (AD / LDAP / Azure AD / SSO)
• Global & cluster-level policies
• Maintain Rancher backups, DR, and recovery procedures
• Enforce Kubernetes security best practices like Pod Security Standards (PSS)
• Network policies and Secrets management
• integrate Kubernetes with CI/CD tools e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, Argo CD
• Enable GitOps workflows for application and cluster configuration.
• Support Helm chart development and lifecycle management.
• Assist development teams with Deployment strategies, Resource optimization
• Troubleshooting application issues on Kubernetes.

Experience:

• 6–10+ years in Linux / Infrastructure / Cloud
• 3–5+ years hands-on Kubernetes production experience
• Strong expertise in Rancher (RKE / RKE2 / K3s)
• Deep understanding of:
  • Kubernetes control plane
  • etcd
  • Networking (CNI)
  • Storage (CSI)

Notes:- All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, religious creed, sex, national origin, ancestry, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, genetic information, military and veteran status, marital status, pregnancy, gender, gender expression, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by local law, regulation, or ordinance.

Benefits: Danta offers a compensation package to all W2 employees that are competitive in the industry. It consists of competitive pay, the option to elect healthcare insurance (Dental, Medical, Vision), Major holidays and Paid sick leave as per state law.

The rate/ Salary range is dependent on numerous factors including Qualification, Experience and Location.