(Senior) Kubernetes Operations Engineer

Company Summary

Lila Sciences is a privately held, early-stage technology company pioneering the application of artificial intelligence to transform every aspect of the scientific method. Lila is backed by Flagship Pioneering, which brings the courage, long-term vision, and resources needed to realize unreasonable results. Join our mission-driven team and contribute to the future of science.

Our Life Sciences effort is leveraging AI and high-throughput automation for valuable therapeutic discovery and development across biological modalities.

At Lila, we are uniquely cross-functional and collaborative. We are actively reimagining the way teams work together and communicate. Therefore, we seek individuals with an inclusive mindset and a diversity of thought. Our teams thrive in unstructured and creative environments. All voices are heard because we know that experience comes in many forms, skills are transferable, and passion goes a long way.

If this sounds like an environment you’d love to work in, even if you only have some of the experience listed below, please apply.

The Role

We are seeking a dedicated and skilled Kubernetes Operations Engineer (Engineer II) to join our team. This role will focus on building and maintaining production Kubernetes environments to support a suite of internal services by creating a foundation that supports scalability, performance, and security. You will be part of a dynamic, cross-functional team responsible for a software platform that integrates AI and automated laboratories to push the frontier of science. As a member of the computational platform team, you will lead the design and maintenance of our Kubernetes infrastructure as code and integrate closely with an overarching CICD.  You will not work alone, as the whole team is expected to deploy and monitor applications on the cluster.  You will set the stage for this work. The ideal candidate is fluent in kubectl, excited about observability broadly defined, and enjoys both learning and teaching.

Responsibilities:

• Deploy and maintain Kubernetes clusters: Design, implement, and manage Kubernetes clusters in cloud environments.
• Manage Kubernetes manifests: Write and maintain YAML files for deploying applications, services, and infrastructure components.
• Configure and manage containerized applications: Ensure that containerized applications are deployed and running efficiently within the Kubernetes environment.
• Scale applications: Monitor and manage the scalability of applications to meet performance and availability requirements.
• Ensure high availability: Implement strategies to ensure the availability and resilience of both applications and the Kubernetes infrastructure.
• Monitoring and logging: Set up and maintain monitoring, logging, and alerting systems to ensure the health and performance of the Kubernetes clusters and applications.
• Security best practices: Implement industry best practices for securing Kubernetes clusters and containerized applications.
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues: Diagnose and resolve issues related to Kubernetes and container orchestration in a timely manner.
• Automate deployment processes: Develop and maintain CI/CD pipelines for automated deployment of applications.

Qualifications:

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in managing and supporting Kubernetes environments in production.
• Technical expertise: Strong understanding of Kubernetes architecture and concepts such as pods, services, deployments, and stateful sets.
• CI/CD Tooling: Experience with best practices and tools such as ArgoCD, Flux, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CircleCI, or Travis CI.
• Infrastructure as Code and related tools: Helm Charts, CDK, Terraform
• Containerization: Proficiency with containerization technologies like Docker.
• Scripting and automation: Experience with Python
• Observability .
• AWS: EKS and related tools
• Security: Knowledge of security best practices in a Kubernetes environment.
• Problem-solving: Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills.
• Collaboration: Excellent communication and teamwork abilities.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Kubernetes certifications (e.g., CKA, CKAD)
• Experience with service mesh technologies like Istio or Linkerd.
• Knowledge of network policies and ingress controllers.

Working at Lila, you would have access to advanced technology in the areas of:

• AI experimental design and simulation
• Automated liquid handling and instrumentation
• Generative molecular design

More About Flagship Pioneering

Flagship Pioneering is a