Senior Kubernetes Platform Engineer

Job Title: Senior Kubernetes Platform Engineer
Location: Washington DC
Employment: W2

As a Senior Kubernetes Platform Engineer supporting an enterprise client in the Washington, DC area, you will serve as a primary technical leader responsible for architecting, securing, and scaling multi-cloud Kubernetes infrastructure across AWS (EKS), Azure (AKS), and hybrid environments. In this role, you will own platform capabilities end-to-end—driving GitOps automation via ArgoCD, streamlining enterprise CI/CD with GitHub Actions Runner Controller (ARC), and creating seamless developer "golden paths" through hardened IaC modules and progressive delivery pipelines. Operating in a high-standards enterprise setting, you will champion platform reliability, write clear Architectural Decision Records (ADRs), enforce robust security controls (RBAC, Kyverno/Gatekeeper), and enable cross-functional engineering teams to deliver software safely, continuously, and efficiently.

Key Responsibilities

• Platform Architecture & Multi-Cloud Strategy: Design, build, and maintain production EKS and AKS platform standards, cluster lifecycles, cross-cloud networking, storage, disaster recovery, and multi-region portability.
• GitOps & CI/CD Engineering: Architect enterprise GitOps deployment patterns using ArgoCD and implement GitHub Actions Runner Controller (ARC) to automate release workflows, progressive delivery (canary/blue-green), and fail-forward/rollback mechanisms.
• Governance, Guardrails & Security: Establish enterprise RBAC, Network Policies, Pod Security Standards, and Kyverno or Gatekeeper policy enforcement; manage secret standards and automate release evidence capture for compliance.
• Developer Experience (DX) & Golden Paths: Publish hardened base container images and reusable, golden Terraform modules to provide self-service platform capabilities and reduce cognitive load for application developers.
• Reliability, Observability & Quality Gates: Define SLOs, error budgets, and central monitoring standards while integrating automated quality gates, security scans, and pre-production performance/chaos testing into CI/CD pipelines.
• Technical Leadership & Collaboration: Own platform capabilities through their full lifecycle, mentor engineering teams on modern cloud-native practices, and author Architectural Decision Records (ADRs) to clarify design trade-offs.

Qualifications

• Experience: 7+ years in DevOps, SRE, or Infrastructure/Platform Engineering, with at least 5+ years dedicated strictly to Kubernetes platform engineering at scale.
• Core Technical Expertise: Deep hands-on experience with Kubernetes, AWS EKS, Azure AKS, ArgoCD, GitHub ARC, Terraform, and GitOps methodologies.
• Security & Network Engineering: Proven background configuring cloud networking, ingress controllers, RBAC, network policies, and policy-as-code frameworks (Kyverno, OPA/Gatekeeper).
• Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience).
• Preferred Certifications & Skills: Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS), AWS/Azure Cloud Certifications, Service Mesh experience (Istio/Linkerd), Backstage IDP, and prior background working in highly regulated or enterprise environments."