Senior Platform Engineer (Top Secret/SCI with agreement to obtain CI Poly Clearance Required)

North Point Technology•Chantilly, VA

3d•Onsite

About The Position

North Point Technology is looking to hire a Senior Platform Engineer with deep expertise in on-premises Kubernetes infrastructure to support a mission-critical enterprise container platform operating in a fully air-gapped, non-cloud environment. This is a short-term contract assignment of approximately seven months. An active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility is required upon hire, and the selected candidate must be willing and able to obtain a polygraph within the customer's timeline.

Requirements

On-premises Kubernetes cluster deployment and management in production environments (non-cloud, air-gapped)
Bootstrapping Kubernetes clusters using Kubespray, kubeadm, or equivalent tools
Enterprise Linux system administration including systemd service management and kernel tuning
Container runtime installation and configuration: containerd and CRI-O
cgroups v2, Linux namespaces, and container isolation management at the OS level
OS-level security hardening with AppArmor and SELinux
Software-defined storage design and implementation; CSI driver deployment for dynamic persistent volume provisioning
High-availability Kubernetes control plane architecture with multi-master nodes and internal load balancers
etcd cluster operations: backups, snapshots, restoration, and defragmentation
Kubernetes security: RBAC, network policies, pod security standards, admission controllers, and API server auditing
Certificate lifecycle management for Kubernetes cluster components and service mesh
Ansible automation and Ansible playbook development for infrastructure provisioning
GitOps workflows and ArgoCD for declarative, continuous deployment
Infrastructure-as-code repository management for repeatable deployments
CI/CD pipeline construction for infrastructure testing and validation
Air-gapped and offline deployment strategies including Kaniko-based container image builds
Cluster administration and debugging using k9s, kubectl, and crictl
Troubleshooting static pods: etcd, kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager, kube-scheduler
Scripting in Bash and/or Python for cluster automation
Active Top Secret security clearance SCI eligibility
Willingness and ability to obtain a CI polygraph within the customer's timeline
U.S. citizenship required

Nice To Haves

Identity and authorization standards: X.509, SAML, OAuth2, OIDC, LDAP
ICAM solution architecture using Oracle or other enterprise-grade identity platforms
Master's degree in a STEM field
Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) certification

Responsibilities

Design, deploy, and maintain enterprise-scale Kubernetes clusters built entirely from bare metal in secure, air-gapped data centers.
Perform advanced Linux administration including systemd, kernel tuning, and SSH key architecture.
Manually install and configure container runtimes (containerd, CRI-O).
Implement OS-level security hardening with AppArmor and SELinux.
Manage cgroups v2 and container isolation mechanisms.
Design and implement software-defined storage solutions.
Build distributed storage clusters from raw drives.
Deploy Container Storage Interface (CSI) drivers for dynamic volume provisioning.
Monitor storage performance and capacity.
Bootstrap production Kubernetes clusters from scratch using kubeadm or Kubespray.
Design multi-master high-availability control plane architectures.
Configure internal load balancers for API server redundancy.
Manage etcd operations including backups, snapshots, restoration, and defragmentation.
Implement RBAC policies, network policies, pod security standards, admission controllers, API server auditing, certificate lifecycle management, and vulnerability remediation.
Develop Ansible playbooks and Bash/Python scripts for cluster provisioning.
Implement GitOps workflows with ArgoCD.
Maintain infrastructure-as-code repositories.
Build CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure validation.
Manage Kaniko-based container image builds in air-gapped environments.
Troubleshoot cluster components using k9s, kubectl, and crictl.