Kubernetes Platform Engineer

Kubernetes Platform Engineer 1- Year Contract Remote $100/hour

Our client Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is seeking a Kubernetes Platform Engineer for a one year contract. This is a hands-on individual contributor role focused on the day-to-day operation administration and improvement of Kubernetes platforms supporting critical research and scientific networking systems.

• Employment Type: W-2 only. Candidates must be authorized to work in the United States. No C2C or third-party arrangements.

• Contract Dates: May 27 2026 May 26 2027

• Location: Remote

• Hours: Full-time Monday through Friday

• Background Check: Clear criminal background check required

Responsibilities:

• Manage the full lifecycle of Kubernetes clusters including upgrades patching scaling and capacity planning across on prem and cloud environments

• Administer and troubleshoot Kubernetes platforms using K3s RKE2 GKE and EKS

• Implement and maintain Cilium CNI and enforce secure network policies for multi tenant environments

• Troubleshoot complex cluster and networking issues including control plane failures node issues DNS and service connectivity

• Manage etcd health backups and disaster recovery processes

• Collaborate with datacenter and network teams on infrastructure changes and maintenance windows

• Support development teams by reviewing deployment manifests and assisting with workload troubleshooting

• Contribute to internal developer platform initiatives and platform documentation runbooks and best practices

• Apply Kubernetes security best practices including RBAC Pod Security Standards and secrets management

Required Qualifications:

• 8 years of relevant experience or equivalent combination of education and experience

• Hands-on experience administering on premises Kubernetes (K3s RKE2 or similar)

• Experience supporting cloud-managed Kubernetes environments (GKE and/or EKS)

• Strong Linux and networking fundamentals including routing DNS TCP/IP and firewall concepts

• Experience with Cilium CNI or equivalent container networking solutions

• Familiarity with GitOps workflows and tools such as ArgoCD or Flux

• Scripting and automation skills using Bash Python and/or Go

• Experience working in collaborative production-focused engineering environments

• Cloud experience with GCP and/or AWS

Preferred Qualifications:

• Go programming experience for platform tooling or operator development

• CKA or CKS certification

• Experience with BGP IPv6 networking or service mesh technologies

• Infrastructure as Code experience with Terraform or Ansible

• Experience supporting internal developer platforms or tools such as Backstage

• Strong familiarity with GitHub or GitLab workflows and code review practices