Lead Kubernetes Engineer

University of Wisconsin Madison•Madison, WI

13h•Hybrid

About The Position

The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH), Department of Information Technology, is seeking a Kubernetes Engineer to architect and operate the container orchestration platform underpinning a wide range of strategic SMPH initiatives. This role will design Kubernetes clusters supporting use cases that include web application hosting, the SMPH research analytics platform, LLMs-as-a-service, and AI-specific orchestration components. The Kubernetes Engineer will work closely with security, infrastructure, research computing, and application teams to ensure clusters meet HIPAA, NIST 800-53, and NIST 800-171 control requirements while delivering a developer-friendly platform that accelerates delivery of new services. This position may require some work to be performed in-person, onsite, at a designated campus work location. Some work may be performed remotely, at an offsite, non-campus work location.

Requirements

At least three (3) years of hands-on production experience designing, operating, and securing Kubernetes clusters
Demonstrated experience with Ansible for configuration management and automation
Demonstrated cybersecurity experience, including applying security controls to platform infrastructure

Nice To Haves

Kubernetes-related certification (e.g., CKA, CKAD, CKS)
Cybersecurity certification (e.g., CISSP, Security+, GIAC certifications)
Contributions to open-source cloud-native community projects (CNCF or related)
Experience with Terraform and infrastructure-as-code in a regulated environment (HIPAA, NIST 800-53, NIST 800-171)
Experience with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or other managed Kubernetes platforms
Experience supporting research computing, AI/ML workloads, or LLM-serving infrastructure

Responsibilities

Manages, maintains, selects, and develops automation tools and infrastructure, including security configurations
Performs integration, migration, configuration, and security of existing applications and services into automated infrastructures
Serves as a subject matter expert to internal stakeholders, providing guidance and training to staff
Serves as technical lead for one or more aspects of the system
Analyzes requirements and communicates and coordinates with staff and internal stakeholders related to the system and/or project
Develops, programs, and/or deploys automation workflows for deployment, configuration, and/or monitoring of systems/services