Kubernetes Engineer (Cloud Native Infrastructure & Automation)

Atlas Technologies•North Charleston, SC

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

Atlas Tech, a veteran-owned IT company serving multiple DoD customers in support of America's warfighters, is seeking an experienced Subject Matter Expert (SME) specializing in Kubernetes and cloud native infrastructure. The ideal candidate will bring deep hands-on knowledge of container orchestration, cluster operations, automation frameworks, and modern DevOps practices. Experience with multi-cluster environments, service mesh, and cloud provider Kubernetes platforms is highly valuable. This role focuses on designing, implementing, and optimizing enterprise grade Kubernetes environments to drive scalability, reliability, and operational excellence. This position allows for telework up to 2 days per week. However, Atlas reserves the right to adjust the schedule, if required to meet the needs of our customer. Travel Up To - 10%

Requirements

Must be a US Citizen.
Must currently possess and maintain a Department of Defense (DoD) Secret Level Security Clearance.
Extensive hands-on Kubernetes experience, including cluster operations, workload deployment, and infrastructure components.
Familiarity with cloud platforms providing managed Kubernetes (AKS, EKS, GKE).
Excellent communication and documentation skills.
Solid understanding of containers and container build processes (Docker, Podman, Buildah, etc.).
Strong troubleshooting skills for cluster networking, storage, and control plane issues.
Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) or ingress controllers (NGINX, HAProxy, Traefik)
Experience with Helm charts, Kustomize, and Kubernetes Operators templating/packaging mechanism.
Knowledge of Kubernetes security tooling (OPA/Gatekeeper, Kyverno, Falco).
Strong skills with automation tooling (Ansible, Terraform, or similar).
Proficiency with Git, Jenkins, YAML, CI/CD pipelines, and DevOps workflows.
Familiarity with DoD/DoW compliance automation (DISA STIGs, SCAP, RMF)
Strong communication skills with the ability to explain complex concepts clearly

Nice To Haves

Certifications such as Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
BS Degree in relevant technical field or combination of education and experience
Ability to obtain the following certs within 3 months of start date: CompTIA Security+ CE
Professional Scrum Developer certification or Certified Scrum Developer certification
3+ years of dedicated, hands-on experience designing, provisioning, and administering production Kubernetes environments.
5+ years experience working with a wide range of IT products

Responsibilities

Serve as the primary technical authority for Kubernetes strategy, operations, and best practices.
Architect, deploy, and manage Kubernetes clusters across bare-metal, virtualized, and multi-cloud environments.
Leverage GitOps delivery pipelines using Argo CD (or Flux) to automate infrastructure state, cluster add-ons, and workload deployments across multi-cluster environments.
Configure, tune, and troubleshoot cluster networking, including Container Network Interfaces, ingress controllers and service mesh architectures.
Build and optimize enhance monitoring, logging, and tracing frameworks to ensure cluster reliability and workload visibility.
Troubleshoot complex cluster issues, including networking, scheduling, performance tuning, and node health.
Collaborate with application teams to onboard workloads, design deployment patterns, and optimize resource usage.
Drive documentation, standards, and reusable automation templates for repeatability across environments.
Provide knowledge transfer, training, and mentorship to junior engineers and cross functional teams