Sr. Kubernetes Engineer

*Active Top Secret Clearance is needed for consideration to this position*

Zachary Piper Solutions is currently seeking a Senior Kubernetes Engineer / Platform Administrator to support a highly classified, mission-critical program based in Washington, DC. This position is a full-time, onsite role supporting highly secure, production-grade container platforms. This role is critical to the design, deployment, and sustainment of highly available, secure, and scalable Kubernetes environments supporting mission workloads. As a Senior Kubernetes Engineer, you will serve as a technical leader in platform engineering, automation, and operational reliability within a high-responsibility environment.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design, deploy, and administer Kubernetes clusters in enterprise and production environments
• Build and maintain core Kubernetes components, including:
  • Control plane services
  • Worker node lifecycle management
  • Cluster networking (CNI), ingress controllers, and service mesh technologies (as applicable)
• Perform cluster upgrades, patching, scaling, and performance tuning
• Implement workload scheduling strategies and container orchestration best practices
• Design and maintain high availability, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery strategies

Infrastructure & Automation:

• Develop and maintain Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and automation workflows
• Automate cluster provisioning, configuration management, and environment scaling
• Support CI/CD integrations for containerized application deployments
• Build repeatable, auditable processes for platform lifecycle management

Security & Compliance:

• Implement Kubernetes security best practices, including:
  • Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)
  • Network policies and segmentation
  • Secrets management
  • Container image security and vulnerability scanning
• Ensure platform compliance with organizational and regulatory security requirements
• Monitor, identify, and remediate vulnerabilities across the container ecosystem

Monitoring & Observability (Preferred)

• Integrate and maintain observability platforms such as Grafana
• Develop dashboards and alerts for:
  • Cluster health
  • Application performance
  • Infrastructure and system metrics
• Support centralized logging, telemetry, and distributed tracing

Application Support & Integration:

• Partner closely with application development teams to support containerized workloads
• Troubleshoot platform and application issues across distributed environments
• Optimize resource utilization, performance, and reliability of containerized applications

Required Qualifications:

• Senior-level experience administering Kubernetes in production environments
• Strong understanding of:
  • Containerization technologies (Docker or equivalent)
  • Kubernetes architecture and core components
  • Cluster networking and storage concepts
• Strong Linux system administration experience
• Experience scripting and automating with Python
• Proven troubleshooting and problem-solving skills in complex distributed systems
• Ability to operate independently in high-responsibility environments

Security Clearance

• Active Top Secret clearance (Required)
• TS/SCI strongly preferred for faster program onboarding

Compensation & Benefits

• Salary: From $200,000- $250,000 *commensurate with experience*
• Benefits Include:
  • 401(k) with matching
  • Medical, Dental, and Vision insurance
  • Life insurance
  • Paid Time Off (PTO)
  • Parental leave
  • Retirement plan

This job opens for applications on 3/16/2026. Applications for this job will be accepted for at least 30 days from the posting date

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Keywords: Kubernetes, Kubernetes Administration, Platform Engineering, Container Platforms, Docker, Linux, Python Automation, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD, DevSecOps, RBAC, Kubernetes Security, Service Mesh, Istio, Grafana, Observability, PostgreSQL, RabbitMQ, Cloud Engineering, AWS, Azure, High Availability, Disaster Recovery, Federal Programs, Cleared Engineering, Top Secret Clearance, TS/SCI, Onsite, Washington DC