Title: OpenShift Engineer
Location: Fremont, CA (Remote is also fine)
Duration: Long Term Contract
Senior OpenShift Virtualization Engineer
(VMware Migration & Platform Modernization)
Position Summary
We are seeking a highly experienced Senior OpenShift Virtualization Engineer to lead the design, implementation, and operationalization of Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization as a strategic virtualization platform. This role will serve as a technical leader for evaluating, migrating, and modernizing enterprise virtual infrastructure, with a primary focus on transitioning workloads from VMware vSphere/ESXi environments to OpenShift Virtualization.
Key Responsibilities
Platform Engineering
- Architect, deploy, and maintain highly available OpenShift Virtualization clusters.
- Design scalable virtualization platforms supporting both virtual machine and container workloads.
- Configure and optimize storage, networking, security, monitoring, and backup solutions within OpenShift environments.
- Develop standards, reference architectures, operational procedures, and platform governance models.
VMware Migration Leadership
- Lead migrations from VMware ESXi/vSphere to OpenShift Virtualization.
- Assess existing VMware environments and create migration roadmaps.
- Define migration waves, dependency mapping, rollback plans, and validation procedures.
- Utilize Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV/Forklift) to automate workload migrations. Migration tooling is a key capability highlighted in vendor documentation.
- Execute proof-of-concept, pilot, and production migration activities.
- Validate workload performance, functionality, availability, and disaster recovery after migration.
Automation & Infrastructure as Code
- Develop automation using:
- Ansible Automation Platform
- GitOps methodologies
- Terraform
- OpenShift Operators
- CI/CD pipelines
- Automate cluster deployment, lifecycle operations, VM provisioning, and configuration management.
Storage & Data Services
- Engineer storage integrations using enterprise storage platforms.
- Implement CSI-based storage solutions and persistent storage strategies.
- Design migration procedures for VMDK-to-PVC conversion, storage class mapping, and data movement workflows. These capabilities are central to VMware-to-OpenShift migration processes documented by Red Hat and NetApp.
Operations & Reliability
- Establish monitoring, logging, alerting, capacity planning, and performance management practices.
- Support high availability, backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity requirements.
- Develop operational runbooks and troubleshooting guides.
- Participate in architecture reviews and strategic infrastructure planning.
Technical Leadership
- Provide mentorship to infrastructure, virtualization, and platform engineering teams.
- Serve as a subject matter expert for OpenShift Virtualization and KubeVirt (optional).
- Collaborate with application owners, security teams, storage engineers, and cloud platform teams.
- Present technical recommendations to senior leadership and stakeholders.
Required Qualifications
Experience
- 8+ years of enterprise infrastructure engineering experience.
- 5+ years supporting VMware vSphere and ESXi environments.
- 3+ years of hands-on Red Hat OpenShift administration and engineering experience.
- Proven experience leading VMware-to-OpenShift Virtualization migration initiatives.
- Experience migrating production workloads involving:
- Windows Server
- Linux platforms
- Tier-1 business applications
- Enterprise databases
Technical Skills
OpenShift
- Red Hat OpenShift Platform
- OpenShift Virtualization
- Operators and Operator Lifecycle Management
VMware
- VMware ESXi
- VMware vSphere
- VMware vCenter
- VM lifecycle management
- Datastore and networking architecture
- vMotion and migration planning
Migration Technologies
- Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV/Forklift)
- Workload discovery and assessment
- Migration planning and execution
- Cutover and rollback procedures
- VM conversion methodologies
Automation
- Ansible
- Terraform
- Git
- GitOps frameworks
- Python, Bash, or PowerShell
Storage & Networking
- CSI storage integrations
- SAN/NAS technologies
- Enterprise storage platforms
- Software-defined networking
- VLANs, load balancing, DNS, and identity integration
Preferred Qualifications
- Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Administration
- Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA)
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
- VMware VCP or VCAP certification
- Experience with NetApp, Pure Storage, Dell PowerFlex, or similar enterprise storage platforms
- Experience supporting environments with 1,000+ virtual machines
- Experience implementing hybrid cloud and platform modernization strategies
Desired Leadership Characteristics
- Strategic thinker with strong architecture skills.
- Demonstrated success leading large-scale infrastructure transformation programs.
- Strong communication and stakeholder management skills.
- Proven ability to influence technical direction and drive adoption of new platforms.
- Ability to balance operational stability with modernization objectives.
Success Metrics
- Successful migration of VMware workloads to OpenShift Virtualization.
- Reduction in operational complexity through automation.
- Achievement of platform performance and availability targets.
- Delivery of repeatable migration frameworks and processes.
- Adoption of OpenShift Virtualization as a strategic enterprise platform.
- Improved infrastructure agility through convergence of VM and container workloads.
