Kubernetes Platform Administrator / Technical Lead

Position Summary

The Brain Team is seeking a Senior Kubernetes Platform Administrator / Technical Lead to lead the engineering, operation, and evolution of our enterprise Kubernetes platform running on Amazon EKS. This role is responsible for the architecture, reliability, scalability, security, and automation of the platform while mentoring engineers and partnering with adjacent platform teams.

The ideal candidate is a hands-on technical leader with deep expertise in Kubernetes networking, cloud infrastructure, Infrastructure as Code, and GitOps who thrives in highly automated, security-focused environments.

Primary Responsibilities

·         Serve as the technical lead for the Brain Team, providing subject matter expertise in Kubernetes and networking concepts.

·         Design, deploy, maintain, and optimize production Kubernetes clusters on Amazon EKS.

·         Lead platform networking initiatives using Cilium and Istio, including service mesh, ingress, network policies, and traffic management.

·         Develop and maintain infrastructure using Terraform and AWS best practices.

·         Manage Kubernetes node lifecycle, autoscaling, and capacity planning using Karpenter.

·         Troubleshoot complex platform, networking, and application issues across distributed systems.

·         Collaborate with development, security, and platform teams to deliver secure, scalable platform capabilities.

·         Drive platform automation through GitOps, GitHub, and GitHub Actions.

·         Support the organization's FISMA High compliance objectives by implementing secure-by-default platform standards and operational controls.

·         Leverage AI-assisted development tools, including GitHub Copilot, to improve engineering productivity and platform automation.

Required Qualifications

·         8+ years of infrastructure or platform engineering experience.

·         5+ years administering production Kubernetes environments.

·         Strong experience with Amazon EKS, Kubernetes architecture, and Linux administration.

·         Deep understanding of Kubernetes networking with hands-on experience using Cilium and Istio.

·         Strong experience with Terraform and AWS infrastructure.

·         Experience implementing GitOps workflows using GitHub and GitHub Actions.

·         Experience leading technical initiatives and mentoring engineering teams.

·         Strong troubleshooting, communication, and collaboration skills.

Preferred Qualifications

Experience with one or more of the following is highly desirable:

·         Kubernetes certifications (CKA, CKS, CKAD)

·         AWS or Terraform certifications

·         Argo CD and Argo Rollouts

·         Kyverno or Kubernetes policy management

·         Secure CI/CD and Continuous ATO (cATO) pipelines

·         Container security and vulnerability scanning (Aqua or similar)

·         Platform engineering or internal developer portals

·         DataDog, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, or other observability platforms

·         Helm, Kustomize, Gateway API, or other cloud-native tooling

·         AWS security and compliance frameworks, including experience supporting FISMA or other regulated environments

·         On-call work (preferably with PagerDuty)