Staff Kubernetes Security Engineer

True Anomaly•Denver, CO

1d•Onsite

About The Position

A new space race has begun. True Anomaly seeks those with the talent and ambition to build innovative technology that solves the next generation of engineering, manufacturing, and operational challenges for space security and sustainability. OUR MISSION The peaceful use of space is essential for continued prosperity on Earth—from communications and finance to navigation and logistics. True Anomaly builds innovative technology at the intersection of spacecraft, software, and AI to enhance the capabilities of the U.S., its allies, and commercial partners. We safeguard global security by ensuring space access and sustainability for all. OUR VALUES Be the offset. We create asymmetric advantages with creativity and ingenuity What would it take? We challenge assumptions to deliver ambitious results It’s the people. Our team is our competitive advantage and we are better together YOUR MISSION Kubernetes security at the scale and complexity of space operations is genuinely hard — and a lot of it is still unsolved. This role exists to change that. As our Staff Kubernetes Security Engineer, you'll build zero-trust foundations and secure paved paths that enable our platform and development teams to ship safely on Kubernetes. You'll own the security posture of our container orchestration platform across multi-cloud environments, architecting security platforms that define how we operate containers in production. Working as part of the Platform Security team, you'll have broad impact across all teams deploying containerized workloads. This is a hands-on technical leadership role where you'll write production code daily while driving strategic security initiatives. You'll thrive on ambiguously hard problems, give yourself the toughest challenges, and have the technical maturity to drive complex security initiatives from conception to production with minimal direction. You'll be working in an AI-native environment where leveraging AI to accelerate your impact is expected. This position requires the ability to obtain and maintain a security clearance.

Requirements

Active security clearance or ability to obtain and maintain security clearance.
Deep expertise securing production Kubernetes environments at scale, with comprehensive understanding of the container attack surface
Extensive experience building Kubernetes operators, CRDs, and controllers—you understand the Kubernetes API and extension mechanisms deeply
Deep PKI knowledge with hands-on experience designing and operating certificate infrastructure—including private CA hierarchies, cert-manager deployment and operation, automated certificate rotation for service meshes (Istio/Linkerd), certificate lifecycle management, and X.509/TLS troubleshooting
You've built and maintained PKI infrastructure in production, not just consumed managed certificate services
Strong software development skills in Go (preferred) and Python with proven track record of building production platforms that engineering teams actually use
Strong software engineering fundamentals: comfortable with data structures, algorithms, API design, debugging production systems, and working across multiple languages
Track record of building security platforms or foundational services used across multiple engineering teams
Hands-on experience with container security tools and frameworks (Falco, OPA, Kyverno, Gatekeeper, service mesh security)
Deep understanding of Kubernetes internals: API server security, etcd encryption, CNI plugins, admission webhooks, RBAC, and control plane hardening
Experience with GitOps patterns and securing CI/CD pipelines for Kubernetes deployments
Experience with cloud security primitives across Azure and/or AWS
Practical knowledge of supply chain security, image scanning, admission control, and runtime threat detection
Proven ability to independently drive ambiguous, complex security initiatives to completion at staff+ level
Track record of giving yourself hard problems and navigating ambiguity with confidence
Comfortable diving into unfamiliar codebases and leveraging AI to bridge technical gaps
Strong communication skills and ability to influence technical direction across teams

Responsibilities

Architect and build security platforms, frameworks, and foundational services used by platform and development teams—making secure patterns the default choice for Kubernetes deployments
Drive adoption of security best practices and influence technical direction for Kubernetes security, workload isolation, and container deployment
Own the security architecture and posture of our Kubernetes infrastructure across Azure and AWS environments
Design and implement secure-by-default infrastructure including pod security policies, network policies, RBAC, admission controllers, and runtime security
Build and ship production-grade automation, tooling, CLI utilities, and operators to enforce security best practices and detect threats across our Kubernetes clusters
Develop secure Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs), controllers, and Kubernetes operators for security automation and policy enforcement
Lead security architecture decisions for workload isolation, secrets management, service mesh security, and supply chain security
Design, implement, and operate PKI infrastructure for Kubernetes—including private CA hierarchies, automated certificate lifecycle management (cert-manager), service mesh mTLS certificate rotation, and certificate issuance for workloads and control plane components
Partner with Cloud Security Engineer to design and operate unified PKI infrastructure across cloud and container environments—ensuring consistent certificate policies, trust anchors, and operational practices.
Collaborate on node IAM , pod service accounts, CNI security, and cloud provider integrations
Secure the Kubernetes control plane including API server, etcd, and CNI plugin configurations
Design and implement admission webhooks (validating and mutating) for security policy enforcement
Identify and drive resolution of complex security challenges in multi-tenant and multi-cluster environments
Partner with Platform and development teams to embed security into GitOps workflows and the development lifecycle
Stay ahead of emerging container security threats and proactively harden our defenses
Develop security testing frameworks and validation tools to continuously verify security controls
Leverage AI tools to accelerate development, close knowledge gaps, and push the boundaries of what's possible