Principal/Senior Principal Kubernetes Engineer -AHT

RELOCATION ASSISTANCE: Relocation assistance may be available

CLEARANCE REQUIRED FOR START: Yes

CLEARANCE TYPE: Secret

TRAVEL: Yes, 10% of the Time

Description

At Northrop Grumman, our employees have incredible opportunities to work on revolutionary systems that impact people's lives around the world today, and for generations to come. Our pioneering and inventive spirit has enabled us to be at the forefront of many technological advancements in our nation's history - from the first flight across the Atlantic Ocean, to stealth bombers, to landing on the moon. We look for people who have bold new ideas, courage and a pioneering spirit to join forces to invent the future, and have fun along the way. Our culture thrives on intellectual curiosity, cognitive diversity and bringing your whole self to work — and we have an insatiable drive to do what others think is impossible. Our employees are not only part of history, they're making history.

Job Description:

Performs technical planning, system integration, verification and validation, cost and risk, and supportability and effectiveness analyses for total systems. Analyses are performed at all levels of total system product to include: concept, design, fabrication, test, installation, operation, maintenance and disposal. Ensures the logical and systematic conversion of customer or product requirements into total systems solutions that acknowledge technical, schedule, and cost constraints. Performs functional analysis, timeline analysis, detail trade studies, requirements allocation and interface definition studies to translate customer requirements into hardware and software specifications.

**This position is contingent upon funding/placement

Basic Qualifications

• Active Secret Security Clearance
• Active 8570 IAT Level II Certification (i.e. CompTIA Security +)
• For level 3: 5 Years of experience with bachelor’s in science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), 2 years with master’s or additional years of experience in lieu of a degree
• For level 4: 8 years of experience with bachelor’s in science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), 6 years with master’s or additional years of experience in lieu of a degree
• Current (not expired) Certified Kubernetes Administrator.
• Strong knowledge of container runtimes (containerd)
• Proficiency with kubectl or Helm for deployment and configuration
• Experience with cluster provisioning tools (Ansible, Cluster API, Terraform)
• Ability to design, implement, and troubleshoot high‑availability control‑plane architectures
• Solid understanding of networking concepts (Service/Pod IPs, Ingress, LoadBalancers, IPVS, BGP, Calico/Weave)
• Hands‑on experience with monitoring and logging stacks (Prometheus/Grafana, Loki, Elastic/EFK)
• Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI, Argo CD, Tekton) that deploy to Kubernetes
• Knowledge of RBAC, Pod Security Policies/OPA Gatekeeper, and general security best practices
• Ability to diagnose and resolve performance and resource‑allocation issues (CPU, memory, QoS, limits/requests)
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to document procedures and share knowledge with teams

Preferred Qualifications

• Competence in scripting/automation with Go, Python, or Bash
• Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
• Direct experience with RKE2 and OpenShift
• Experience with cloud provider services (EKS, GKE, AKS) and hybrid/on‑prem environments
• Familiarity with stateful workloads (etcd, databases, Elasticsearch) and their backup/restore strategies
• Experience implementing disaster recovery and multi‑cluster federation
• 3+ years of hands‑on experience administering Kubernetes clusters
• 5+ years of experience managing Linux/Unix systems in production

Primary Level Salary Range: $119,600.00 - $179,400.00

Secondary Level Salary Range: $149,300.00 - $223,900.00

The above salary range represents a general guideline; however, Northrop Grumman considers a number of factors when determining base salary offers such as the scope and responsibilities of the position and the candidate's experience, education, skills and current market conditions.

Depending on the posit