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Xcel Engineering · 2 weeks ago

Kubernetes Principal Engineer/ Architect

Oak Ridge, TN

Full-time

Onsite

Lead/Staff

XCEL Engineering, Inc. is an award-winning small business that provides trusted information technology, engineering, consulting and project management solutions and services to federal agencies and organizations. They are seeking a qualified applicant for a Kubernetes Principal Engineer/ Architect to architect, implement, and maintain the infrastructure for their on-premises Kubernetes clusters, focusing on scalability, reliability, and maintainability.

Information Technology & Services

Responsibilities

Lead the design and technical implementation of on-premises Kubernetes clusters that replace and improve upon features previously provided by OpenShift

Select, evaluate, and integrate critical components for networking, CI/CD tooling, OS management, service mesh, and Kubernetes operators-excluding observability, which is handled by a dedicated SRE sub-team

Build test environments to evaluate tooling based on performance, feature set, and maintainability-especially for components that must work reliably with on-premise hardware and OS requirements

Own upgrades, security hardening, monitoring integration, and scalability of all cluster infrastructure

Write and maintain infrastructure and deployment code using tools such as ArgoCD (GitOps), Puppet (OS management), Go, Python, Bash, and GitLab CI

Support the use and understanding of in-house Kubernetes operators and serve as a secondary maintainer for those controllers

Collaborate on building a next-generation internal developer platform inspired by tools like Backstage or AWS Proton, focused on increasing development efficiency and security

Work with the cybersecurity team to define secure image baselines and automate the patching pipeline for container images and golden base layers

Engage with development teams to understand platform needs and tailor the cluster experience to meet evolving requirements

Provide architectural guidance, code reviews, and pair programming support to a team of 8-12 engineers

Contribute to onboarding, team documentation, and process improvement initiatives

Act as a go-to technical expert for all Kubernetes platform questions across the engineering organization

Partner closely with internal cybersecurity and development teams to ensure the platform meets security, compliance, and usability expectations

Participate in cross-functional projects related to platform enhancements and cluster lifecycle automation

Be able to represent the Platforms team with vendors and both internal and external collaborators and partners

Qualification

KubernetesInfrastructure as CodeGoPythonCI/CDLinux-based OS managementPuppetArgoCDTechnical LeadershipCollaboration

Required

Experience in architecting, implementing, and maintaining on-premises Kubernetes clusters

Strong focus on scalability, reliability, and maintainability

Experience leading technical direction of platform engineering initiatives

Ability to evaluate and integrate key technologies

Experience with networking, CI/CD tooling, OS management, service mesh, and Kubernetes operators

Experience building test environments for tooling evaluation

Experience with upgrades, security hardening, monitoring integration, and scalability of cluster infrastructure

Proficiency in writing and maintaining infrastructure and deployment code using tools such as ArgoCD (GitOps), Puppet (OS management), Go, Python, Bash, and GitLab CI

Experience supporting in-house Kubernetes operators

Experience collaborating on building internal developer platforms

Experience working with cybersecurity teams to define secure image baselines and automate patching pipelines

Experience engaging with development teams to understand platform needs

Experience providing architectural guidance, code reviews, and pair programming support

Experience contributing to onboarding, team documentation, and process improvement initiatives

Experience acting as a technical expert for Kubernetes platform questions

Experience partnering with internal cybersecurity and development teams

Experience participating in cross-functional projects related to platform enhancements

Experience representing the Platforms team with vendors and collaborators