Container & VM Software Engineer

Role: Container & VM Software Engineer

Location: Charlotte NC / Dallas TX / McLean VA (100% Onsite)

End Client - Banking Client

Contract

Experience Required: 6 - 9 years of relevant

infrastructure/platform engineering experience

About the Role

The Platform Engineering team keeps our container and virtual machine estate perpetually current, secure, and self-healing — no stale images, no unpatched hosts, no manual repaves. As a Container & VM Software Engineer, you will own the automation, tooling, and operational discipline that lets applications run on infrastructure that renews itself on a defined cadence rather than accumulating drift and risk over time.

You will work hands-on across OpenShift/Kubernetes and Linux VM estates, building the image pipelines, CI/CD automation, and migration playbooks — increasingly accelerated by approved AI coding agents — that bring new and legacy applications onto this self-renewing model, and then keep them there.

Key Responsibilities

• Administer and operate OpenShift/Kubernetes clusters and Linux virtual machines across development, test, and production environments, ensuring platform availability, performance, and security compliance.
• Design, build, and maintain Ansible playbooks and roles for configuration management, patching, and repeatable provisioning across the combined container and VM estate.
• Build and maintain golden/base images using Packer (or an equivalent image-build tool) for both container and VM workloads, including the VM Image Factory capability.
• Engineer and maintain CI/CD pipelines automating build, test, image scanning, and deployment across the platform, reducing manual release effort.
• Own the end-to-end container and VM image lifecycle — repave, rebuild, patch, and retire images on a defined cadence to eliminate drift and close vulnerability windows.
• Full-stack platform tooling: build platform capabilities using Java, .NET, Go, or Python backends paired with React or Angular front-ends, and Oracle/SQL-backed services, following a microservices architecture.
• AI-enabled engineering: use approved AI coding agents (e.g., Devin or equivalent) to accelerate Category-2 and Category-3 application onboarding and migration work.
• Build VM image lineage tracking and service-discovery tooling to support intelligent traffic shifting during repave cutovers.
• Lead application onboarding and migration engagements, partnering with application teams to containerize workloads or migrate them from legacy infrastructure onto the platform.
• Partner with security teams to maintain hardened, minimal base images (e.g., Chainguard, Red Hat UBI) and drive vulnerability remediation within agreed SLAs.
• Modernize legacy COTS/MOTS applications so they run reliably on the container/VM platform.
• Endpoint & observability tooling: manage endpoint and OS-level patching (e.g., via BigFix or an equivalent EPP) and extend observability using Azure Monitor Agent (AMA) and drift detection tooling.
• Participate in SRE practices, including on-call rotation, incident response, and structured handoff of newly onboarded workloads from project delivery into business-as-usual (BAU) operations.

Must-Have Qualifications

• Hands-on OpenShift/Kubernetes administration and Linux VM administration in a production enterprise environment.
• Configuration management and image build automation using Ansible and Packer (or an equivalent tool).
• Proven CI/CD pipeline engineering experience (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, Tekton, or similar).
• Working proficiency in at least one of Java, .NET, Go, or Python, plus React or Angular for platform tooling UIs.
• Direct experience owning container/VM image lifecycle management, including repave and patching cadences at scale.
• Demonstrated experience leading application onboarding and migration to a modern platform.

Good-to-Have / Preferred Qualifications

• Experience using AI coding agents (e.g., Devin or similar) to accelerate application onboarding.
• Experience with ephemeral environments and end-to-end (E2E) test automation.
• Familiarity with secure/minimal base images such as Chainguard or Red Hat UBI.
• Experience modernizing COTS/MOTS applications.
• Experience with BigFix, EPP, or similar endpoint patching platforms, and Azure Monitor Agent (AMA).
• SRE experience and prior involvement in project-to-BAU operational handoff.

Education & Experience

• Bachelor''s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent hands-on experience.
• 6-9 years of progressive experience in platform engineering, DevOps, or systems administration, with at least 2-3 years focused specifically on container platforms (OpenShift/Kubernetes) at production scale.
• Relevant certifications (e.g., Certified Kubernetes Administrator, Red Hat OpenShift certifications) are a plus but not required.

What Success Looks Like

• A defined percentage of the container/VM fleet is on a rolling repave cadence with near-zero manually managed exceptions.
• Mean time to patch critical vulnerabilities is reduced through automated image and endpoint patching.
• New applications are onboarded to the platform with a repeatable, documented migration playbook — increasingly assisted by AI coding agents.
• Drift incidents are caught by automated detection before they impact production.