Senior Platform Engineer (Kubernetes)

A financial firm is seeking a Senior Platform Engineer (Kubernetes) in Jersey City, NJ. This role involves designing and implementing infrastructure abstractions and APIs for AI workloads using Kubernetes and GitOps. Key responsibilities include architecting and managing Kubernetes platforms (AWS EKS, Red Hat OpenShift), implementing GitOps with ArgoCD, and operating middleware like Kafka and Redis. The engineer will also build Helm charts, enforce container security, manage network policies, and configure service mesh for observability and secure communication.

Must Have

• Design and implement infrastructure abstractions and APIs for AI workloads using Kubernetes and GitOps.
• Architect, deploy, and manage Kubernetes platforms (AWS EKS and Red Hat OpenShift) across environments.
• Implement GitOps workflows with ArgoCD for declarative app deployments.
• Design and operate highly available Kafka and Managed Redis Enterprise clusters.
• Build and manage Helm charts for platform and middleware stacks.
• Enforce container security and policy governance using policies-as-code tools.
• Implement network policies (Kubernetes NetworkPolicy / Calico) for segmentation.
• Configure and manage service mesh (Istio, Linkerd) for observability and traffic controls.
• Conduct capacity planning, cluster sizing, resource tuning, and autoscaling strategies.
• Lead incident response and root cause analysis, automating recovery workflows.

Good to Have

• EKS and/or OpenShift administration certification.
• Knowledge of middleware architecture for high-throughput, low-latency messaging systems.
• Experience with cloud cost optimization and chargeback models.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions) and alerting tools (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/Splunk).
• Familiarity with CNCF ecosystem tools and emerging trends in platform engineering.

A financial firm is looking for a Senior Platform Engineer (Kubernetes) to join their team in Jersey City, NJ.

Compensation: $140-190k

Must be a U.S. Citizen or GC Holder; No visa sponsorship

5 days/week onsite in Jersey City - candidates must be local

Responsibilities

• Design and implement infrastructure abstractions and APIs that simplify deploying AI workloads using Kubernetes-native operations and GitOps patterns.
• Architect, deploy, and manage Kubernetes platforms (AWS EKS and Red Hat OpenShift) across different environments.
• Implement GitOps workflows with ArgoCD to manage declarative app deployments.
• Design and operate middleware infrastructure:
• Highly available Kafka clusters (mirroring, partitioning, tooling)
• Managed Redis Enterprise clusters (sharding, high availability, replication)
• 3Scale API Gateway development and administration
• Build and manage helm charts, templating, parameterization, and versioning for both platform and middleware stacks.
• Enforce container security and policy governance using policies-as-code tools (e.g. OPA, Kyverno), scanning (e.g. Clair, Snyk), and automated admission controls.
• Implement network policies (Kubernetes NetworkPolicy / Calico) to enforce segmentation and micro segmentation.
• Configure and manage service mesh (e.g. Istio, Linkerd) for observability, traffic controls, and secure service to service communication.
• Conduct capacity planning, cluster sizing, resource tuning, and autoscaling strategies.
• Conduct architecture reviews, train engineers, and drive platform best practices across teams.
• Partner with SREs to define platform SLAs, uptime targets, resilience benchmarks, and alerting/monitoring.
• Lead incident response and root cause analysis, automating recovery workflows and improving platform resiliency.

Qualifications

Required:

• 15 years of overall engineering experience, including:
• At least 8 years with Kubernetes platforms (EKS, OpenShift) in production.
• Experienced in managing streaming and caching infrastructure at scale (Kafka, Redis Enterprise Clusters).
• Prior hands-on administration or development of API Management / Gateway platforms - preferably Red Hat 3Scale
• Demonstrated ability to collaborate with cross-functional teams to deploy AI workloads on Kubernetes or cloud-native platforms.
• Deep knowledge of DevSecOps principles, container security, governance, and compliance in enterprise environments.
• Strong automation experience: Helm, GitOps, ArgoCD, IaC (Terraform/AWS-CloudFormation/Ansible).
• Experience configuring service mesh, network policy controls, and multi-tenancy in Kubernetes.
• Demonstrated expertise in scripting languages such as Python, Bash, Groovy, or equivalent; hands on experience developing automation tooling, custom Kubernetes operators/controllers, or other platform level integrations. A candidate with a software development background or experience building production-grade automation frameworks is strongly preferred.
• Thorough understanding of core Kubernetes concepts, and observability tooling.
• Demonstrated experience in capacity planning, cluster sizing, and performance tuning for critical infrastructure.
• Strong troubleshooting skills across Kubernetes, middleware, and distributed systems; experienced in leading incident response and root cause analysis.

Preferred

• EKS and/or OpenShift administration certification (CKA, AWS Certified Kubernetes Administrator, Red Hat Certified OpenShift Administrator, or equivalent).
• Knowledge of middleware architecture for high-throughput, low-latency messaging systems.
• Experience with cloud cost optimization, chargeback models.
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitHub Actions), alerting (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/Splunk or similar tools/platforms).
• Familiarity with CNCF ecosystem tools and emerging trends in platform engineering and cloud-native environment.