Rancher SME

Job Title: Rancher 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)