Rancher & Kubernetes SME

Job Title: Rancher & Kubernetes SME

Location: Princeton NJ - 08540

Mode: Contract (6 Months) Onsite

Qualifications:

• Design and implement Rancher-managed Kubernetes clusters (RKE RKE2 K3s EKS AKS GKE).
• Architect high availability (HA) Rancher setups.
• Define multi-cluster and multi-tenant strategies using Rancher projects namespaces and RBAC.
• Integrate Kubernetes with VMware Bare Metal and Cloud platforms.
• Establish standardized cluster blueprints and reference architectures.
• Act as final escalation (L3) for Kubernetes and Rancher incidents.
• Diagnose and resolve Control plane failures
• etcd performance and corruption issues
• Pod scheduling and node pressure issues
• CNI (Calico / Cilium) networking problems
• CSI storage failures (Ceph Longhorn EBS Azure Disk NFS)
• Perform root cause analysis (RCA) and provide preventive recommendations.
• Install upgrade and maintain Rancher Server.
• Manage cluster lifecycles using Rancher UI & APIs.
• Implement and manage Rancher RBAC Authentication (AD / LDAP / Azure AD / SSO)
• Global & cluster-level policies
• Maintain Rancher backups DR and recovery procedures
• Enforce Kubernetes security best practices like Pod Security Standards (PSS)
• Network policies and Secrets management
• integrate Kubernetes with CI/CD tools e.g. GitHub Actions GitLab CI Jenkins Argo CD
• Enable GitOps workflows for application and cluster configuration.
• Support Helm chart development and lifecycle management.
• Assist development teams with Deployment strategies Resource optimization
• Troubleshooting application issues on Kubernetes

Experience:

• 6 10 years in Linux / Infrastructure / Cloud
• 3 5 years hands-on Kubernetes production experience
• Strong expertise in Rancher (RKE / RKE2 / K3s)
• Deep understanding of:
• Kubernetes control plane
• etcd
• Networking (CNI)
• Storage (CSI)