Kubernetes Engineer (DoD Secret Weekday Shift Remote U.S.)
Description • Own the heartbeat of national defense communications. You’ll architect, harden, and scale Kubernetes clusters that keep Air Force Platform One and Air Mobility Command connected 24/7. Every pod you schedule and every ingress you secure directly enables real-time collaboration for warfighters on every continent. • Design and optimize multi-cloud Kubernetes estates spanning AWS, Azure, and GCP. You’ll craft repeatable, policy-driven cluster blueprints that survive region loss, traffic spikes, and zero-day threats while meeting strict DoD Impact Level controls. • Guarantee five-nines uptime for mission-critical chat (Mattermost) that carries classified and unclassified traffic alike. You’ll build self-healing deployments, chaos-engineered canaries, and automated rollback pipelines so operators never lose a message—even at 3 a.m. ET. • Automate everything. Terraform modules, Ansible playbooks, and GitOps workflows will be your daily language. You’ll push infrastructure changes the same way developers push code—peer-reviewed, versioned, and continuously delivered. • Embed security at every layer. From OPA Gatekeeper policies to Falco runtime sensors, you’ll translate STIGs, NIST 800-53, and CNSSI 1253 controls into living, breathing cluster configurations that pass red-team scrutiny. • Partner with DevSecOps, Security, and Cloud Architecture squads in a high-trust, fast-feedback culture. Daily stand-ups, blameless post-mortems, and joint war-room sessions keep the mission—and your skills—moving forward. • Conduct R&D during the weekday evening or overnight shift (5:00 p.m.–12:30 a.m. ET or 12:30 a.m.–8:00 a.m. ET). While most of the country sleeps, you’ll prototype new service meshes, benchmark custom controllers, and refine autoscaling algorithms without impacting peak operations. • Champion observability and SRE practices. You’ll instrument clusters with Prometheus, Grafana, and Jaeger, then tune alerts so the right person is paged at the right time—never the entire team. • Mentor junior engineers and write runbooks that turn tribal knowledge into shared capability. Your documentation becomes the blueprint for future deployments across every DoD program Rackner supports. • Influence product roadmaps. Your field experience with custom CRDs, operators, and edge cases will guide the next generation of Rackner accelerators and open-source contributions. Requirements • Active or ability to obtain U.S. DoD Secret clearance • 3+ years production-grade Kubernetes administration (cluster lifecycle, networking, storage, RBAC) • Hands-on expertise with Terraform, Ansible, and GitLab CI/CD in regulated environments • Strong Linux systems and TCP/IP networking fundamentals • Nice-to-have: CKA/CKAD certification and multi-cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) fluency ️ Benefits • 401(k) with 100% match up to 6% of salary • Comprehensive medical, dental, and vision coverage • Home office setup stipend and top-tier equipment • Remote-first culture with flexible weekday evening or overnight shifts Apply tot his job