Kubernetes Engineer

LLNL•Livermore, CA

22h•$146,340 - $222,564•Hybrid

About The Position

Join us and make YOUR mark on the World! Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has turned bold ideas into world-changing impact advancing science and technology to strengthen U.S. security and promote global stability. Our mission spans four critical national security areas nuclear deterrence, threat preparedness, energy security, and multi-domain defense empowering teams to take on the toughest challenges of today and tomorrow. With a culture built on innovation and operational excellence, LLNL is a place where your expertise can make a real impact. Do you have a strong passion for containers and Cloud Native technologies. Do you understand the value containers and Kubernetes brings to managing applications deployments? As a Kubernetes Engineer, you will be responsible for one of our Computing Platform’s most critical components, our Kubernetes cluster. You will help streamline the deployment, maintenance, monitoring and expand its capabilities to meet LLNL’s intensive scientific workloads. If you are ready to drive meaningful change and make a real impact from the ground up, this opportunity is for you. We have an opening for an experienced Kubernetes Engineer to develop and support a 24x7 large-scale bare-metal Kubernetes environments. As a member of the team, you’ll bridge the gap between hardware and high-performance software, ensuring our scientific teams have the reliable, secure platforms needed to build world-class products. This is a high-impact mission where your expertise in on-prem automation and cluster orchestration directly accelerates our product innovation. This position is within the Global Security Computing Applications Division (GS-CAD) of the Computing Directorate, matrixed to the Global Security Directorate. This position requires part-time on-site presence due to the nature of the work. This position will be filled at either level based on knowledge and related experience as assessed by the hiring team. Additional job responsibilities (outlined below) will be assigned if hired at the higher level.

Requirements

Ability to secure and maintain a U.S. DOE Q-level security clearance, which requires U.S. citizenship
Bachelor’s degree in computer science, software engineering, or a related technical discipline, or an equivalent combination of education and relevant experience.
Comprehensive knowledge of and experience distributing standard configurations for clusters leveraging configuration management tools such as Ansible or Puppet.
Broad experience performing Kubernetes administration in a moderately complex to complex environment, including tasks such as installation, networking, security, troubleshooting, and monitoring.
Broad experience with software development or system administration using scripting languages (e.g. Python, Bash, Perl, Ruby, Groovy, etc.).
Strong understanding of core Kubernetes concepts such as: Pods, Deployments, Services and/or PVCs.
Proficient interpersonal skills necessary to interact with all levels of personnel and ability to work independently, under limited direction, in a multi-disciplinary team environment.
Proficient verbal and written communication skills necessary to effectively collaborate in a team environment and present and explain technical information.
Ability to set priorities and independently resolve moderately complex problems in a fast-paced environment.
Advanced knowledge of and experience with Kubernetes internals, such as networking, kubelet function/responsibility, etcd and/or control plan architecture.
Advanced experience managing Kubernetes clusters in production environments such as on-premises or in the cloud.
Experience delivering advanced projects, achieving positive results, and driving projects to closure, on time and on budget with advanced analytical skills to analyze complex systems and networks.

Nice To Haves

Certification in container orchestration systems (i.e. Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD), and/or Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA).
Experience with configuration management systems such as Ansible, Puppet, Chef or Salt.
Experience in creating, managing and deploying production Kubernetes clusters to on-prem hardware and/or cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).
Experience utilizing AI to assist with IaC code development, troubleshooting clusters, and/or streamlining work.

Responsibilities

Contribute to the design and deployment of large-scale bare-metal clusters, integrating control planes with VAST Storage arrays to deliver high-performance persistent storage.
Contribute to the implementation of advanced cluster networking to ensure seamless, low-latency communication across multi-rack and multi-site topologies.
Participate in building and maintaining automated, self-healing workflows using CI/CD pipelines to manage cluster lifecycles, ensuring zero-touch deployments and consistent platform health.
Support rigorous SLIs/SLOs by engineering robust observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana) and enforcing airtight security through RBAC, OIDC, and network isolation.
Partner with internal business units to onboard moderately complex workloads, while elevating the technical bar for the team through design reviews and mentorship.
Collaborate with team members on integrating AI agents to assist with troubleshooting and automating cluster management operations.
Perform other duties as assigned.
Collaborate with researchers on developing repeatable software stacks used for research and automate deployment and configuration across multiple environments.
Partner with security teams to incorporate security checks and audits for Kubernetes deployments into our Gitlab CI/CD system.
Extend Kubernetes to help simplify usage, operations and user applications.