Kubernetes Operations Lead Specialist Engineer

Job Title : Kubernetes Operations Lead Specialist Engineer

Location : Chicago Illinois

Experience : 12 Years

Employment Type : Contract

Interview Type : In-Person or Webcam

Job Description

The Kubernetes Operations Lead Specialist Engineer will oversee and manage enterprise-level Kubernetes clusters ensuring optimal performance scalability security and reliability of containerized platforms. This role involves leading a team responsible for day-to-day Kubernetes operations automation infrastructure improvements and production support across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. The candidate should have senior-level hands-on expertise in Kubernetes DevOps tooling CI / CD pipelines cloud services and container management.

Key Responsibilities

Lead Kubernetes operations including cluster deployment configuration upgrades scaling monitoring and performance tuning.

Manage and maintain Kubernetes clusters across cloud and on-prem environments such as AWS Azure or GCP.

Define and enforce best practices around container orchestration security network policies resource optimization and workload management.

Implement observability solutions leveraging logging monitoring and tracing tools such as Prometheus Grafana ELK and others.

Oversee incident response root cause analysis and post-incident reviews to ensure platform reliability.

Design and automate infrastructure operations using Infrastructure-as-Code tools like Terraform Helm and Ansible.

Collaborate with development security and operations teams to support DevOps workflows and CI / CD pipeline integration.

Lead capacity planning resource forecasting performance assessments and upgrade planning.

Document standards deployment procedures runbooks and operational best practices.

Mentor junior engineers and function as a technical escalation point.

Required Qualifications

12 years of overall IT experience with at least 6 years in Kubernetes and container orchestration.

Hands-on experience administering and operating large-scale Kubernetes clusters.

Strong background in cloud platforms such as AWS Azure or Google Cloud.

Expertise in Docker Helm charts Terraform YAML configurations and service mesh technologies (e.g. Istio Linkerd).

Proficiency with CI / CD tools such as Jenkins GitLab CI Argo CD or Tekton.

Strong knowledge of Linux systems networking concepts load balancers and DNS.

Experience with observability and monitoring frameworks including Prometheus Grafana ELK OpenTelemetry.

Familiarity with Kubernetes security standards RBAC policies certificate management and image scanning.

Solid scripting experience with Bash Python or Go.

Strong troubleshooting and performance optimization skills.

Preferred Skills

Kubernetes certifications such as CKA CKAD or CKS.

Experience with multi-cluster hybrid cloud or on-prem Kubernetes distributions such as EKS AKS GKE OpenShift or Rancher.

Knowledge of GitOps methodologies and tools like Argo CD or Flux.

Experience with disaster recovery backup solutions and high availability architecture.

Previous team leadership or technical architect experience.

Familiarity with site reliability engineering concepts and automation frameworks.

Key Skills

Financial Services,Information Technology,Cost Control,Corporate Risk Management,Law

Experience : years

Vacancy : 1