What are the responsibilities and job description for the Kubernetes Engineer position at Karthik Consulting?
New
Posted: May 7, 2026
I. Program Overview
Program Description
The DevSecOps Platform and Space C2 Enablement effort supports USSF SSC/BCC Operational C2 Acquisition Delta priorities by enabling integrated Ops Space C2 capabilities through the Kobayashi Maru Platform Team. The program provides platform, cloud, infrastructure, cybersecurity, toolchain, collaboration, onboarding, and operational support capabilities for developers, product teams, government users, and mission software teams across multiple classification environments.
Program Scope
The program scope includes Kubernetes platform engineering, cloud-native infrastructure, container orchestration, DevSecOps toolchain support, identity and access coordination, observability, service reliability, incident response, configuration management, cybersecurity alignment, and support for LOE0/1/2/3/4 teams operating across Platform and Space C2 environments. The effort enables current and future tools and services needed to develop, test, secure, and deliver software applications to production across test, IL4 development, IL6 staging/production, and higher classification level environments.
II. Position Overview
The Kubernetes Engineer designs, secures, deploys, operates, and continuously improves Kubernetes-based platform capabilities supporting the DevSecOps Platform and Space C2 Enablement effort. The role supports the KM Platform Team by maintaining resilient container orchestration services, enabling software product teams, strengthening platform reliability and observability, and ensuring containerized services remain secure, scalable, and aligned with mission, Agile, and DevSecOps delivery expectations across multiple environments.
Work Environment
Kubernetes Platform Engineering and Operations
Education
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Management Information Systems, STEM, or a related technical field. Equivalent relevant experience, military service, or advanced technical training may be considered in lieu of a degree.
Professional Certifications
Posted: May 7, 2026
I. Program Overview
Program Description
The DevSecOps Platform and Space C2 Enablement effort supports USSF SSC/BCC Operational C2 Acquisition Delta priorities by enabling integrated Ops Space C2 capabilities through the Kobayashi Maru Platform Team. The program provides platform, cloud, infrastructure, cybersecurity, toolchain, collaboration, onboarding, and operational support capabilities for developers, product teams, government users, and mission software teams across multiple classification environments.
Program Scope
The program scope includes Kubernetes platform engineering, cloud-native infrastructure, container orchestration, DevSecOps toolchain support, identity and access coordination, observability, service reliability, incident response, configuration management, cybersecurity alignment, and support for LOE0/1/2/3/4 teams operating across Platform and Space C2 environments. The effort enables current and future tools and services needed to develop, test, secure, and deliver software applications to production across test, IL4 development, IL6 staging/production, and higher classification level environments.
II. Position Overview
The Kubernetes Engineer designs, secures, deploys, operates, and continuously improves Kubernetes-based platform capabilities supporting the DevSecOps Platform and Space C2 Enablement effort. The role supports the KM Platform Team by maintaining resilient container orchestration services, enabling software product teams, strengthening platform reliability and observability, and ensuring containerized services remain secure, scalable, and aligned with mission, Agile, and DevSecOps delivery expectations across multiple environments.
Work Environment
- Work Location: Colorado Springs, CO (In Office 5 days a week)
- Security Clearance: TS/SCI
Kubernetes Platform Engineering and Operations
- Design, deploy, configure, upgrade, patch, and maintain Kubernetes environments supporting platform-hosted tools, services, and mission software delivery.
- Operate resilient Kubernetes capabilities that support software product teams and users across test, development, staging, production, and higher classification environments.
- Ensure Kubernetes clusters are properly configured, resourced, patched, monitored, and able to scale without unnecessary overprovisioning.
- Manage the lifecycle of containerized services used to develop, test, secure, and deliver software applications to production.
- Deliver container orchestration solutions that maximize the value of container technology for microservices, platform services, and application workloads.
- Design, build, and implement cloud-native architectures using Kubernetes and related platform services to support reliable application hosting and delivery.
- Develop and maintain containerized solutions for relational and non-relational databases, data auditing, caching, performance, and supporting platform capabilities.
- Coordinate with application teams, platform engineers, and stakeholders to align containerized service designs with mission and operational requirements.
- Secure and configure Kubernetes-orchestrated services and supporting infrastructure in accordance with DoD, Space Force, program, and environment-specific security expectations.
- Support identity, access, secret management, certificate management, ingress, role-based access control, and secure configuration practices across Kubernetes environments.
- Maintain configuration discipline using Infrastructure as Code principles and approved DevSecOps practices across development, test, and production environments.
- Support platform documentation, configuration control, and change coordination to ensure Kubernetes services remain traceable, repeatable, and compliant.
- Implement observability capabilities, key service metrics, alerting thresholds, dashboards, and monitoring foundations for Kubernetes and containerized services.
- Establish and maintain Service Level Objectives and related Site Reliability Engineering metrics to improve platform performance, availability, and reliability.
- Monitor north-south and east-west traffic patterns to ensure container-based critical services remain available, performant, and secure.
- Analyze service and traffic metrics to identify performance issues, reliability risks, resource constraints, and improvement opportunities.
- Automate infrastructure and system tasks using scripting, configuration management, service discovery, infrastructure orchestration, and automated imaging or deployment tools.
- Use GitOps, Helm, Kustomize, CI/CD, and related DevSecOps practices to support repeatable platform deployments and controlled service updates.
- Support and optimize platform tools such as Argo CD, cert-manager, Ingress, Keycloak, MinIO, MongoDB, Pinniped, Prometheus, Grafana, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, Sealed Secrets, Tanzu Postgres and Operator, Vault, Velero/Restic, Harbor, Jira, Confluence, GitLab, and Helm, as applicable.
- Contribute to an everything-as-code operating model that improves reliability, repeatability, security, and speed of delivery across the KM Platform Team.
- Perform within an Agile delivery framework, including daily stand-ups, sprint and iteration planning, backlog execution, retrospectives, and progress reporting.
- Troubleshoot routine to complex Kubernetes, containerized service, networking, performance, and platform issues with accuracy and urgency.
- Lead or support root cause analysis, postmortems, corrective actions, and lessons learned for containerized service disruptions or recurring platform issues.
- Communicate progress, blockers, risks, and technical recommendations clearly to product teams, platform stakeholders, government representatives, and contractor personnel.
Education
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, Cybersecurity, Management Information Systems, STEM, or a related technical field. Equivalent relevant experience, military service, or advanced technical training may be considered in lieu of a degree.
Professional Certifications
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD), Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA), or equivalent Kubernetes/cloud-native certification required.
- Security required if privileged access is required for the role.
- Cloud, DevSecOps, SRE, Linux, GitOps, VMware Tanzu, or related platform engineering certifications preferred.
- Minimum 6-8 years of professional experience in Kubernetes engineering, platform engineering, cloud-native infrastructure, systems engineering, DevSecOps, or related technical delivery, including at least two years of SRE-related experience.
- U.S. citizenship and active Secret clearance required; ability to obtain and maintain required system, facility, and network access.
- Experience delivering container orchestration solutions and designing, building, and implementing cloud-native architectures using Kubernetes.
- Experience maintaining, configuring, monitoring, upgrading, and troubleshooting Kubernetes clusters and containerized services in development, test, staging, and production environments.
- Experience using Infrastructure as Code, automation, scripting, configuration management, service discovery, infrastructure orchestration, and automated deployment practices.
- Experience designing containerized solutions for microservices, relational and non-relational databases, data auditing, caching, performance, and supporting platform services.
- Experience implementing observability solutions, key metrics, monitoring foundations, dashboards, alerting, log aggregation, and trend analysis capabilities.
- Ability to troubleshoot Kubernetes, containerized service, platform, networking, access, and performance issues and produce root cause analysis or postmortem documentation.
- Experience deploying and managing microservices using container orchestration platforms and supporting secure, scalable, and reliable platform operations.
- Familiarity with tools such as Argo CD, cert-manager, Ingress, Keycloak, MinIO, MongoDB, Pinniped, Prometheus, Grafana, VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, Sealed Secrets, Tanzu Postgres and Operator, Vault, Velero/Restic, Harbor, Kustomize, Jira, Confluence, GitLab, and Helm.
- Experience supporting DoD, Space Force, Air Force, SSC, cleared, classified, IL4, IL6, or higher classification level platform environments.
- Experience supporting Kobayashi Maru, Space C2, DevSecOps Platform, or similar mission software factory/platform engineering environments.
- Experience supporting multiple software product teams, application teams, developers, government users, and external mission partners within a shared platform environment.
- Strong understanding of GitOps, DevSecOps, SRE, Agile delivery, CI/CD, infrastructure automation, platform reliability, incident response, and configuration control practices.
- Experience establishing SLOs, reliability metrics, postmortems, RCAs, capacity planning practices, and service performance improvement actions.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills with the ability to explain technical issues, risks, blockers, and recommendations to technical and non-technical stakeholders.