IT Infrastructure Engineer V - Cloud Kubernetes Developer

Job Summary:
About the Team
The Container Platform and Adoption Services team at Kaiser Permanente (KP) accelerates enterprise application modernization by enabling tenants to adopt container platforms such as OpenShift (on-prem) and Azure AKS (cloud). We partner with application teams across the enterprise to containerize workloads, design cloud-native deployment patterns, and implement automation for CI/CD, high availability, and failover.
Our mission is to simplify the developer experience, reduce onboarding friction, and ensure enterprise applications are production-ready with best-in-class resiliency, security, and compliance. The team also provides L3 engineering support and leads offshore engineers delivering platform enhancements and operational improvements.
Role Summary
The Cloud Developer (Cloud Native Application Developer) plays a hybrid technical-lead role at the intersection of DevOps and platform engineering. The developer will be hands-on in designing and implementing platform feature enhancements, onboarding automation, and container adoption solutions while also leading offshore engineers to deliver high-quality platform capabilities.
This role requires flexibility to collaborate across time zones (overlapping IST) and participation in 247 on-call rotations for production escalation support. The right candidate will thrive in a dynamic environment that balances technical design, implementation, mentorship, and operational excellence.
Responsibilities

• Partner with tenant application teams to analyze existing monolithic workloads and guide them through refactoring and migration to container platforms.
• Design and implement Dockerfiles, Kubernetes/OpenShift manifests, Helm/Kustomize configurations, and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD).
• Enhance and maintain platform capabilities by enabling new Kubernetes features and improving container platform adoption and onboarding efficiency.
• Develop and integrate CI/CD workflows and GitOps automation across multiple toolchains and environments.
• Provide technical guidance on resiliency, scalability, HA, and failover design for both stateless and stateful applications.
• Support S3 Object Store and Operator-based workload onboarding, automation, and lifecycle management.
• Lead and mentor offshore engineers, ensuring delivery of platform enhancements, adherence to standards, and quality engineering practices.
• Provide L3 engineering support-including troubleshooting complex production issues, root cause analysis, and performance optimization.
• Collaborate with Platform Engineering, SRE, and Security teams to ensure all solutions meet compliance, monitoring, and operational readiness standards.
• Participate in 247 on-call rotations for production support escalations and incident response.
• Drive continuous improvement through documentation, reusable frameworks, and automation of onboarding processes.

This senior level employee is primarily responsible for providing expert technical advice on IT infrastructure for assigned systems, setting the technical direction for infrastructure solutions, and for serving as a technical expert for project teams while mentoring and advising others in all system development lifecycle phases.

Essential Responsibilities:

• Conducts or oversees business-specific projects by applying deep expertise in subject area; promoting adherence to all procedures and policies; developing work plans to meet business priorities and deadlines; determining and carrying out processes and methodologies; coordinating and delegating resources to accomplish organizational goals; partnering internally and externally to make effective business decisions; solving complex problems; escalating issues or risks, as appropriate; monitoring progress and results; recognizing and capitalizing on improvement opportunities; evaluating recommendations made; and influencing the completion of project tasks by others.
• Practices self-leadership and promotes learning in others by building relationships with cross-functional stakeholders; communicating information and providing advice to drive projects forward; influencing team members within assigned unit; listening and responding to, seeking, and addressing performance feedback; adapting to competing demands and new responsibilities; providing feedback to others, including upward feedback to leadership and mentoring junior team members; creating and executing plans to capitalize on strengths and improve opportunity areas; and adapting to and learning from change, difficulties, and feedback.
• As part of the IT Engineering job family, this position is responsible for leveraging DEVOPS, and both Waterfall and Agile practices, to design, develop, and deliver resilient, secure, multi-channel, high-volume, high-transaction, on/off-premise, cloud-based solutions.
• Provides consultation and expert technical advice on IT infrastructure planning, engineering, and architecture for assigned systems by assessing the implications of IT strategies on infrastructure capabilities.
• Provides some recommendations and input on options, risks, costs, and benefits for systems designs.
• Leverages partnerships with IT teams and key business partners to troubleshoot complex systems.
• Serves as a functional expert and collaborates with architects and software engineers to ensure functional specifications are converted into flexible, scalable, and maintainable system designs.
• Translates business requirements, and functional and non-functional requirements, into technical specifications that support integrated and sustainable designs for complex or high impact infrastructure systems by partnering with Business Analysts to understand business needs and functional specifications.
• Ensures system designs adhere to company architecture standards.
• Builds partnerships with counterparts in various IT Teams (e.g., database, operations, technical support) throughout system development and implementation.
• Serves as a technical expert for project teams throughout the implementation and maintenance of assigned enterprise infrastructure systems by defining and overseeing the documentation of detailed standards (e.g., guidelines, processes, procedures) for the introduction and maintenance of services.
• Mentors other technical resources throughout infrastructure systems development.
• Reviews and validates technical specifications and documentation for complex or multi-dimensional solutions.
• Leads the development and modification of solutions by identifying technical solutions to business problems.
• Collaborates with business leaders, Solutions, and lead enterprise architects to review business drivers, and establish a foundation for enterprise systems planning.
• Reviews benchmarking results, and provides information to support current and future infrastructure needs and projects to IT leadership. Provides preliminary conclusions.
• Benchmarks and evaluates IT trends and technologies to identify opportunities and considerations that impact ROI.
• Makes recommendations on resources required to maintain service levels and meet new demands.
• Guides and drives physical architecture design for new initiatives.

Minimum Qualifications:

• Minimum two (2) years in a technical leadership role with or without direct reports.
• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, CIS, or related field and Minimum eight (8) years experience in an IT operations environment with technical experience in distributed technologies, systems development, and/or networking.
• Additional equivalent work experience may be substituted for the degree requirement.

Additional Requirements:
Preferred Qualifications:

• 6+ years of IT experience with proven success in application development, containerization, and cloud adoption.
• 3+ years hands-on experience with Kubernetes/OpenShift, including designing manifests, deployments, and service patterns for stateless and stateful applications.
• Strong experience with Docker, Helm, Kustomize, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, and GitOps workflows.
• Familiarity with CI/CD, DevOps automation, and observability tools (logging, monitoring, tracing).
• Development experience with Java, Node.js, Python, or similar languages.
• Strong understanding of application resiliency patterns (scaling, HA, DR).
• Experience leading or mentoring engineers, especially managing offshore delivery and providing L3 platform engineering support.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with flexibility to work overlapping IST hours and participate in 24-7 support rotations.

Primary Location: California,Pleasanton,Pleasanton Tech Cntr Building A
Scheduled Weekly Hours: 40
Shift: Day
Workdays: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
Working Hours Start: 08:00 AM
Working Hours End: 05:00 PM
Job Schedule: Full-time
Job Type: Standard
Worker Location: Flexible
Employee Status: Regular
Employee Group/Union Affiliation: NUE-IT-01|NUE|Non Union Employee
Job Level: Individual Contributor
Department: KPIT ADMIN - CSIT BOSS CM AND BUS - 9601
Pay Range: $147200 - $190410 / year Kaiser Permanente is committed to pay equity and transparency. The posted pay range is based on possible base salaries for the role and does not include the value of our total rewards package. Actual pay determined at offer will be based on years of relevant work experience, education, certifications, skills and geographic location along with a review of current employees in similar roles to ensure that pay equity is achieved and maintained across Kaiser Permanente.
Travel: No
Flexible: Work location is on-site at a KP location, with the flexibility to work from home. Worker location must align with Kaiser Permanente's Authorized States policy. Kaiser Permanente is an equal opportunity employer committed to fair, respectful, and inclusive workplaces. Applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic or status.