Kubernetes Platform Engineer, Task and Technical Lead

Requisition Id 15519 

 

Overview:

The National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL), which hosts several of the world’s most powerful computer systems, is seeking highly qualified individuals to play a key role in improving the security, performance, and reliability of the NCCS computing infrastructure which supports multiple highly ranked Top500 Supercomputers, including the world’s first exaflop system, Frontier.

 

The Team:

As a Task and Technical Lead for the Platform team, you will work within the Platforms group to support all activities of our supercomputer center. Our primary platform is the OLCF Slate Service, built on Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift, which provides a container orchestration service for running critical operation applications and user-managed persistent applications that run alongside our OLCF Supercomputer systems and other OLCF managed HPC clusters.

 

The Role:

As a Platform Engineer Task and Technical Lead, you will operate, implement, and maintain the infrastructure underpinning our on-premises Kubernetes clusters, with a strong focus on scalability, reliability, and maintainability. You will assist in leading the technical direction of our platform engineering initiatives, evaluate and integrate key technologies, provide daily task management for team members on large and medium sized projects, and mentor a team of engineers to deliver a robust internal platform that powers development across the organization.

 

Key Technologies & Tools:

• Languages: Go, Python, Bash
• CI/CD: GitLab CI, ArgoCD
• IaC/Config Management: Puppet, Helm
• Kubernetes & Ecosystem: On-prem K8s, Custom Operators, Service Mesh
• Operating Systems: Linux-based OS management at the hardware level

 

What Sets This Role Apart:

• Deep involvement in operating, managing, and designing on-prem Kubernetes infrastructure, with full ownership from OS/hardware layer up to service-level automation.
• A platform-first approach to engineering that balances security, developer experience, and operational scalability.
• Strong mentorship and team enablement focus—guiding engineers while staying hands-on with operations, architecture, and implementation.

 

Major Duties/Responsibilities:

Platform Operations & Implementation

• Assist in managing operations for on-premises and cloud-based Kubernetes clusters.
• Select, evaluate, and integrate critical components for networking, CI/CD tooling, OS management, service mesh, and Kubernetes operators—excluding observability, which is handled by a dedicated SRE sub-team.
• Build test environments to evaluate tooling based on performance, feature set, and maintainability—especially for components that must work reliably with on-premise hardware and OS requirements.
• Own upgrades, security hardening, monitoring integration, and scalability of all cluster infrastructure.

 

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & Tooling

• Write and maintain infrastructure and deployment code using tools such as ArgoCD (GitOps), Puppet (OS management), Go, Python, Bash, and GitLab CI.
• Support the use and understanding of in-house Kubernetes operators and serve as a secondary maintainer for those controllers.

 

Internal Developer Platform & Enablement

• Collaborate on building a next-generation internal developer platform inspired by tools like Backstage or AWS Proton, focused on increasing development efficiency and security.
• Work with the cybersecurity team to define secure image baselines and automate the patching pipeline for container images and golden base layers.
• Engage with development teams to understand platform needs and tailor the cluster experience to meet evolving requirements.

 

Technical Leadership & Mentorship

• Provide technical guidance, code reviews, and pair programming support to a team of 8-12 engineers.
• Contribute to onboarding, team documentation, and process improvement initiatives.
• Act as a go-to technical expert for all Kubernetes platform questions across the engineering organization.

 

Collaboration