Senior Customer Success Kubernetes Platform Engineer

Ready for Whatis Next? At Kratos, we encourage an entrepreneurial spirit balanced with discipline. We work hard, and take care of our customers, employees, and families. Recognized as thought leaders in our industry, we are motivated by creating and delivering innovative solutions to our nation and global customers. Kratos is seeking a highly skilled Senior DevOps / Kubernetes Platform Engineer to own the design, deployment, and maintenance of Kubernetes clusters and high-performance CI/CD pipelines. This role demands deep Linux skills, advanced automation, and a security-first mindset for mission-critical production systems. You will be responsible for the full lifecycle of infrastructureifrom provisioning to production operationsiwhile ensuring security, scalability, and performance across mission-critical environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Kubernetes Infrastructure Management: Design, deploy, and maintain bare-metal/Public Cloud/Private Cloud Kubernetes clusters, including upgrades, scaling, and high-availability configurations.
• Pipeline Development: Use the Atlassian toolchain (Jira, Bitbucket, Bamboo, Artifactory) to build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for software delivery.
• Infrastructure as Code: Implement and maintain infrastructure provisioning and configuration management using Terraform and Ansible.
• Container Lifecycle Management: Oversee container builds, Helm chart authoring, Harbor/Registry operations, and in-place Stateful Set upgrades in production.
• Automation & Scripting: Create automation scripts in Bash and Python for cluster operations, deployment processes, and monitoring tasks.
• Networking & CNI Management: Configure and manage advanced Kubernetes networking using Multus, Cilium + eBPF, Calico, Istio, and Ingress controllers (nginx, K8s Gateway API, etc.).
• Security & Compliance: Enforce security best practices including TLS/SSL, X509 certificates, SSH key management, image signing, secure access control, and auditing.
• Storage Solutions: Implement and maintain hyper-converged and virtual storage systems (Longhorn, Ceph) for Kubernetes workloads.
• GitOps Implementation: Manage continuous delivery processes using ArgoCD or similar tools.
• Testing & Reliability: Build automated testing solutions for infrastructure components to ensure system reliability and up time.
• Networking Expertise: Apply in-datacenter-level L2/L3/L4 networking knowledge to optimize cluster communication and performance.
• Active Troubleshooting: Leadership of build pipeline clusters withiother DevOps teams and occasional Production troubleshooting escalation

Why Join Us?

• Work with cutting-edge Kubernetes environments at scale.
• Influence infrastructure architecture and DevOps best practices.
• Collaborate with a highly skilled engineering team on complex, high-impact projects.
• Lead the backbone of our infrastructure, ensure performance at scale, and drive automation in a highly technical environment.

• Proven experience in production Kubernetes cluster
• Mastery of Linux systems administration and troubleshooting at scale.
• Strong experience with Atlassian toolchain (Jira, Bitbucket, Bamboo, Artifactory).
• Advanced knowledge of Helm, Terraform, and Ansible.
• Proficiency in Bash and Python scripting.
• Hands-on experience with containerization workflows and CI/CD pipelines.
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes networking (Multus, CNI, Service Mesh).
• Experience with TLS/SSL, SSH, and key management.
• Knowledge of security best practice in containerized environments.
• Experience managing hyper-converged and cloud-native storage.
• Experience in Rancher, OpenShift or other similar K8 Management technologies

Preferred Skills and Experience

• AWS services (EC2, VPC, Load Balancing, ENI, S3, EKS, APIs, CLI).
• Other public, private, or hybrid cloud platforms.
• L4iL7 load balancers
• Development experience in GoLang.

Location: Herndon, VA (preferred) or Colorado Springs, CO (preferred) or Remote Employment
Type: Full-time

#LI-Remote, ori#LI-Hybrid

The grade-based pay range for this job is listed below. Individual salaries within that range are determined through a wide variety of factors including but not limited to education, experience, knowledge, and skills.

Competitive salary based on experience and education
Salary Range: $165,000-$195,000

Kratos is valued for our ability to design and deliver leading edge, resilient solutions for aerospace communication, control, awareness and mission success across a continuum of offeringsifrom commercial to tailored custom solutions and integrated programs. Customers trust us to stay relevant and know we are in it for the long-haul. We bring both the capability and confidence that our customers value and depend on. And, we always deliver.

This posting will close within 90 days from the Posting Date. i