Engineer, Platform II

U.S. Xpress Enterprises, Inc.•Chattanooga, TN

1d•Remote

About The Position

The Platform Engineer II designs, implements, and manages a hybrid Kubernetes platform spanning on-premises vSphere infrastructure and AWS cloud. This role is central to the organization's strategic initiative to build a resilient, cost-effective hybrid environment where containerized workloads can be deployed to either environment seamlessly. The Engineer will build a secure, scalable on-premises Kubernetes platform (Talos Linux, Cilium, Istio, Flux CD) that operates with architectural parity to the existing AWS EKS environment, enabling workload portability, cross-environment disaster recovery, and consistent developer experience regardless of deployment target. The Engineer collaborates with IT architects and leadership on strategic initiatives while working closely with backend, frontend, mobile, and data engineering teams.

Requirements

High school diploma or GED equivalent required
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field or equivalent years of experience required
Equivalent years of experience are defined as one year of professional experience for each year of college requested
3+ years of experience in platform engineering, infrastructure, or DevOps roles required
Proven experience architecting and administering Kubernetes clusters in on-premises environments
Hands-on experience with hybrid-cloud architectures integrating on-prem Kubernetes with AWS services (EKS, S3, Secrets Manager, IAM Roles Anywhere)
Hands-on experience provisioning and managing virtual machines on VMware vSphere or similar hypervisor platforms
Experience with CI/CD pipeline design and deployment automation platforms (Octopus Deploy, Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, or similar)
Experience with immutable Kubernetes distributions (Talos Linux, Flatcar, Bottlerocket) or willingness to learn API-driven, immutable OS management
Experience with VMware vSphere environments (VM provisioning, content libraries, resource pools, networking)
Experience with eBPF-based networking (Cilium) including CNI configuration, L2/BGP load balancer announcements, WireGuard encryption, and kube-proxy replacement
Experience with Linux systems administration and networking
Experience implementing GitOps workflows with Flux CD or Argo CD, including multi-repo architectures and Kustomization dependency chains
Deep experience with Helm chart management (creating, customizing, versioning) and Kustomize overlays, particularly within GitOps workflows where HelmReleases and Kustomizations coordinate component deployment ordering
Experience with X.509 certificate lifecycle management (cert-manager), PKI concepts, and certificate-based authentication for cross-environment trust
Deep knowledge of Kubernetes and container orchestration principles
Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform) and cross-platform automation scripting (Bash for Linux, PowerShell for CI/CD pipelines and deployment tooling)
Knowledge of observability and monitoring solutions (OpenTelemetry Collector, Prometheus, Grafana) including cross-environment telemetry forwarding
Strong understanding of security, compliance, and disaster recovery for containerized environments
Adept at assessing organizational dynamics and managing change
Works quickly and efficiently. Able to test solutions, learn, and iterate quickly
Proactive and pragmatic problem solver
Communicates effectively across multiple mediums

Nice To Haves

Transportation, Logistics, and/or Tech industry experience a plus
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) preferred
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) preferred
HashiCorp Certified Terraform Associate preferred
AWS Certified Solutions Architect preferred

Responsibilities

Define and implement the architecture for an on-premises Kubernetes environment, ensuring high availability, scalability, and security.
Design and implement a hybrid cloud platform strategy where on-premises Kubernetes clusters operate with architectural parity to cloud-based EKS clusters, enabling workload portability and cross-environment disaster recovery.
Establish standards and best practices for cluster configuration, networking (Cilium CNI, Istio service mesh), and storage integration (Rook-Ceph).
Design and implement disaster recovery strategies including cross-datacenter Active-Passive failover, backup and restore with Velero, and cross-environment (on-prem to cloud) workload recovery procedures.
Establish workload classification criteria (stateful vs. stateless) to guide placement decisions across on-prem and cloud environments.
Install, configure, and maintain Kubernetes clusters on Talos Linux (immutable, API-driven OS) and supporting components (Cilium CNI, Istio ambient mesh, Flux CD, cert-manager).
Manage RBAC, namespaces, resource quotas, and policies (Kyverno) for governance and security.
Implement backup and restore strategies for clusters and workloads using Velero with S3 and on-prem storage targets.
Manage VMware vSphere infrastructure including VM provisioning, content libraries, resource pools, and datacenter operations.
Develop automation for cluster provisioning, scaling, and lifecycle management using Terraform, Helm, and Kustomize.
Manage GitOps workflows using Flux CD including multi-repo architectures (bootstrap, cluster orchestration, platform components), Kustomization dependency chains, HelmRelease management, and branch-based environment promotion.
Integrate Kubernetes with existing infrastructure services and monitoring solutions (OpenTelemetry Collector, Prometheus, Grafana).
Manage CI/CD pipelines using GitHub Actions (CI) and Octopus Deploy (CD) including variable management, release lifecycle configuration, channel/lifecycle strategies, and multi-environment promotion workflows.
Design and implement cross-environment workload deployment strategies enabling seamless movement of containerized applications between on-prem and cloud.
Integrate on-premises Kubernetes workloads with AWS services using certificate-based authentication (IAM Roles Anywhere with cert-manager) and External Secrets Operator for secrets management.
Manage cloud cost optimization, egress cost management, and workload placement economics to support data-driven decisions on on-prem vs. cloud deployment.
Extend existing cloud observability tooling (Grafana) to on-premises environments using OpenTelemetry Collector for metrics, logs, and traces forwarding.
Design CI/CD pipelines that enable development teams to deploy containerized applications to the hybrid platform with minimal friction.
Build self-service capabilities for developer teams including automated deployment workflows, environment promotion, and rollback procedures.
Ensure the developer experience is consistent regardless of whether workloads deploy to on-prem or cloud.
Harden Kubernetes clusters and container workloads through image scanning, secrets management (External Secrets Operator + AWS Secrets Manager), network policies (Cilium), and Pod Security Standards.
Manage X.509 certificate lifecycle (cert-manager) including PKI, certificate-based cross-environment trust, and Istio CSR integration.
Ensure compliance with organizational and industry standards.
Partner with development teams to enable smooth application deployment and troubleshooting.
Work closely with the cloud platform team to ensure architectural parity and shared standards across on-prem and AWS environments.
Mentor junior engineers on Kubernetes best practices and platform engineering principles.