Kubernetes Platform Architect

Must Have Technical/Functional Skills

• 5+ years of hands on experience and deep expertise in Kubernetes architecture, including control plane, worker nodes, API server, etcd, resource lifecycle management, and reconciliation patterns. 

• 10+ years of Infrastructure, Cloud, or Platform Engineering experience.

• Strong experience with Cluster API (CAPI) for Kubernetes cluster provisioning, scaling, upgrades, lifecycle management, and infrastructure automation. 

• 7 + years of hands on experience and advanced knowledge of Kubernetes workload management including Pods, Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs, ConfigMaps, Secrets, and container lifecycle operations. 

• Strong expertise in Kubernetes networking including CNI, CoreDNS, Ingress Controllers, Gateway API, Load Balancers, Service Discovery, and Network Policies. 

• Experience implementing GitOps-based deployment models using Flux, Helm, Kustomize, and Infrastructure-as-Code practices. 

• Hands-on expertise in Kubernetes security, RBAC, Service Accounts, Secrets Management, certificate management, and policy enforcement frameworks. 

• Strong knowledge of observability platforms including Prometheus, Grafana, centralized logging, monitoring, alerting, and performance management. 

• Experience with persistent storage technologies including CSI drivers, Storage Classes, PV/PVC administration, and stateful workload management. 

• Proven experience implementing disaster recovery, backup/restore strategies, high availability architectures, and platform resilience. 

• Strong troubleshooting skills across Kubernetes clusters, nodes, networking, workloads, scheduling, storage, authentication, and infrastructure components.

 

Must-have Certification: Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)

 

Nice to Have Experience: Nutanix Kubernetes Platform (NKP) 

 

Nice to Have Certification:

Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) 

Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) 

AWS Solutions Architect Professional / Associate

 

Roles & Responsibilities

The Kubernetes Platform Architect will serve as the technical leader responsible for defining and operating enterprise-scale Kubernetes platforms. This role combines platform architecture, lifecycle automation, security governance, observability, and multi-cluster strategy to deliver a secure, scalable, and resilient cloud-native ecosystem that accelerates application delivery and operational excellence.

• Architect, design, and govern enterprise Kubernetes platforms supporting mission-critical applications. 

• Define Kubernetes reference architectures, platform standards, operational models, and lifecycle management processes. 

• Lead cluster provisioning, upgrades, scaling, and decommissioning using Cluster API and automation frameworks. 

• Design and implement secure, highly available, and scalable multi-cluster Kubernetes environments. 

• Establish GitOps practices for configuration management, deployment automation, and platform consistency. 

• Drive platform security initiatives including RBAC governance, secrets management, admission controls, policy enforcement, and compliance standards. 

• Implement monitoring, logging, alerting, and observability solutions to ensure platform health and operational excellence. 

• Develop capacity planning, scheduling, workload placement, and resource optimization strategies. 

• Lead root cause analysis and resolution of complex platform, networking, storage, security, and cluster availability issues. 

• Design and validate backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity solutions for Kubernetes environments. 

• Collaborate with development, infrastructure, security, and DevOps teams to onboard and support cloud-native applications. 

• Establish governance, tenancy models, operational automation, and cost optimization practices across multiple Kubernetes clusters. 

• Provide architectural leadership, mentoring, and technical guidance to platform engineering and operations teams. 

• Evaluate emerging Kubernetes ecosystem technologies and drive continuous platform modernization initiatives.

 

Generic Managerial Skills, If any

• Product Strategy, Roadmap Development, and Cross-Functional Stakeholder Leadership

• Experience in driving continuous improvement including design, and standardization of process and methodologies.

• Experience assessing feasibility, complexity and scope of new capabilities and solutions.

• Cross-functional stakeholder collaboration and communication.

• Understanding of Agile methodologies and collaboration with global business and product teams.