Senior Kubernetes Platform Engineer
Pay Range: $71.00 - $78.00 per hour
Experience Level: Senior
Project Overview / Contractor's Role:
We are seeking a Senior Kubernetes Platform Engineer to help operate and scale an enterprise-grade VMware Tanzu Kubernetes platform supporting 100+ clusters across multiple environments, including Production. This is a critical, hands-on role where your work directly impacts the stability and performance of business-critical applications.
Partnering closely with the platform owner, youll play a key role in day-to-day operations, platform sustainment, and on-call supportensuring high availability, reliability, and compliance across the environment. Youll be deeply involved in Kubernetes operations, incident response, and platform maintenance, while also supporting application teams running mission-critical workloads.
This role is ideal for someone who thrives in production environments, enjoys solving complex platform challenges, and wants to make a tangible impact on a large-scale Kubernetes ecosystem.
Qualifications (must haves):Kubernetes Experience
- Strong hands-on experience supporting Kubernetes in Production
- Solid understanding of Kubernetes fundamentals, including:
- Pods, Deployments, StatefulSets
- Services and Ingress
- Namespaces, RBAC, ConfigMaps, and Secrets
- Experience troubleshooting Kubernetes networking, scheduling, and resource issues
Experience operating Kubernetes on enterprise platforms (VMware Tanzu, OpenShift, AKS, EKS, or similar)
Strong Linux administration and troubleshooting skills
Familiarity with container runtimes and container images
Operational Mindset
Experience working in highly regulated, production environments
Comfortable participating in on-call rotations and handling time-sensitive issues
Strong problem-solving skills with the ability to work independently
Nice to Have:
Experience with VMware Tanzu Kubernetes or VMware-based Kubernetes platforms
Scripting experience (Bash, Python) for operational automation
Prior experience supporting large multi-cluster Kubernetes environments
Tasks & Responsibilities:
Kubernetes Platform Operations
Support day-to-day operations of an enterprise Kubernetes platform (100+ clusters, ~50% production)
Perform routine operational tasks including cluster maintenance, upgrades, patching, health checks, and capacity management
Troubleshoot and resolve Kubernetes platform issues impacting cluster or application availability
Participate in incident response, root-cause analysis, and post-incident reviews
On-Call & Backup Coverage
Act as a backup platform engineer to enable on-call rotation and reduce key-person dependency
Provide after-hours support as part of a shared on-call rotation
Serve as a secondary escalation point for critical Production issues
Application & Platform Support
Assist internal application teams with Kubernetes-related questions and issues
Support common Kubernetes constructs such as Pods, Deployments, Services, Ingress, ConfigMaps, and Secrets
Help teams troubleshoot networking, DNS, ingress, certificate, and resource-related issues
Review application configurations for Kubernetes best practices and platform alignment
Enterprise Tooling & Integrations
Work with integrated enterprise tools such as:
- Ingress controllers (e.g., Contour / Envoy)
- Logging platforms (e.g., Fluent Bit, centralized log aggregation)
- Monitoring/observability tools (e.g., Dynatrace or similar)
- Container registries (e.g., Harbor, JFrog, etc)
Help document operational procedures, runbooks, and troubleshooting guides
Share Kubernetes knowledge and best practices with internal teams
Assist in improving platform resiliency, operational maturity, and supportability
