Senior Kubernetes Engineer

Position Overview
The Digital Modernization Sector has an exciting career opportunity for a Senior Kubernetes DevOps Engineer to support the USAF Defensive Cyber Systems Program Management Office at Joint Base San Antonio. This position will support both internal and customer facing projects involving, but not limited to, application containerization, pipeline implementation and management, infrastructure as code development, automation development, and cloud migrations. Utilize your expertise to assist with the consultation and design of infrastructure to support future and undefined workstream efforts to support resilient infrastructure as code. Your contributions will shape mission-critical solutions and drive continuous improvement across diverse projects. Become a key contributor in our cutting-edge environment where continuous learning and knowledge sharing are integral to advancing and optimizing our customer solutions. Bring your own experience and work with our team to teach and learn while building, maintaining, and supporting our customer environments.

On-Site Requirement:

The position requires on-site presence at Joint Base San Antonio.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Lead the design and implementation of robust, scalable infrastructure solutions to enable upcoming and emerging workstreams, partnering closely with architecture and business teams.
• Collaborate with development teams to optimize the deployment, monitoring, and performance of applications on Kubernetes platforms, applying best practices for container orchestration.
• Re-architect and continually enhance Kubernetes clusters to meet the demands of mission-critical workloads, prioritizing scalability, resiliency, and high availability.
• Drive modernization initiatives by designing and operating next-generation infrastructure aligned to evolving customer needs and strategic objectives.
• Analyze team skill gaps, technology opportunities, and process improvements, championing initiatives that improve reliability, system efficiency, and site uptime.
• Proactively troubleshoot, maintain, and optimize existing container orchestration environments to ensure operational excellence and minimal service disruption.
• Deliver expert technical support for incident response, root cause analysis, and break/fix scenarios, ensuring rapid recovery and minimal downtime.
• Continuously evaluate and implement innovative solutions that enhance system performance, security, and customer satisfaction across the Kubernetes landscape.
• Champion GitOps methodologies and streamline version control workflows, fostering adoption of modern DevOps practices and continuous integration/deployment pipelines.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree with 12+ years of relevant experience, or a master’s degree with 10+ years of experience. Equivalent work experience may be considered in lieu of a degree.
• Active DoD 8570 IAT Level II or higher certification (e.g., Security+ CE, CCNA-Security, CySA+, GICSP, GSEC, CND, SSCP)
• Proficient with container orchestration tools like Kubernetes and/or Docker Swarm.
• Proficient with Python, JavaScript or equivalent programming language.
• Strong background in Linux system administration, especially Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
• Experience and ability to lead and mentor junior engineers and lead technical initiatives.
• Must be committed to adopting and adhering to best practices.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Ability to collaborate and work effectively in a team environment.
• Must be able to effectively plan and prioritize tasks.
• Must be capable of performing high-quality work both independently, and with a team, in a fast-moving environment.
• Ability to interact positively, collaborate, and communicate appropriately with team members.
• U.S. Citizenship required with an active DoD Secret clearance and eligibility to obtain TS/SCI.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experienced with Spectro Palette.
• Active DoD TS/SCI clearance.
• Red Hat OpenShift, including setup, configuration, and administration.
• Relevant certifications, such as Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Administration, Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE).
• Experience with cloud-first, AWS/Azure native architectures, and cloud PaaS & SaaS services.
• Experience building and managing CI/CD pipelines and tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, etc).
• Active Kubernetes Certified Administrator (CKA) OR Docker Certified Associate (DCA).

Original Posting:March 24, 2025

For U.S. Positions: While subject to change based on business needs, Leidos reasonably anticipates that this job requisition will remain open for at least 3 days with an anticipated close date of no earlier than 3 days after the original posting date as listed above.

Pay Range:Pay Range $126,100.00 - $227,950.00

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.