Distinguished Software Engineer I - IaaS (Cluster Management) (REMOTE)

Position Summary

GEICO is seeking an experienced Distinguished Engineer with a passion for building high performance, low maintenance, zero-downtime platforms, and applications. You will help drive our insurance business transformation as we transition from a traditional IT model to a tech organization with engineering excellence as its mission, while co-creating the culture of psychological safety and continuous improvement.

Position Description

Our Distinguished Engineer I works with our Principal and Sr. Engineers to innovate and build new systems, improve, and enhance existing systems as well as identify new opportunities to apply your knowledge to solve critical problems. You will lead the strategy and execution of a technical roadmap that will increase the velocity of delivering products and unlock new engineering capabilities. The mission of the Cluster Management team is to actualize the next-generation container cluster management and orchestration platform on Kubernetes. The platform prioritizes security, reliability, scalability, and high efficiency. We are seeking an ideal candidate with profound technical expertise, capable of leading, designing, building, and maintaining highly secure Kubernetes-based cluster management platforms at scale on OpenStack based IaaS cloud platform. This includes operational proficiency on physical hardware or in public cloud environments.

Position Responsibilities

As a Distinguished Engineer, you will:

• Provide comprehensive technical and thought leadership across diverse areas within the enterprise.

• Develop and execute technical software development strategies spanning various domains.

• Ensure accountability for the quality, usability, and performance of delivered solutions.

• Influence and educate leadership at all organizational levels.

• Consistently share best practices, driving process improvements within and across teams.

• Analyze costs, forecast, and integrate them into strategic business plans.

• Determine and support resource requirements, evaluate operational processes, and measure outcomes to guarantee desired results. Demonstrate adaptability and sponsor continuous learning.

• Develop, lead, and work with the team to execute a strategic platform development plan for IaaS, encompassing containers, cluster management, Kubernetes, and OpenStack. Prioritize compliance, policy, risk security, governance, optimization for performance and efficiency across the entire development lifecycle.

• Provide meaningful abstractions, clear customer Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and relevant Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

• Stay at the forefront of emerging container and cluster management trends, technologies, and best practices. Apply this knowledge to enhance GEICO's IaaS/PaaS strategies.

• Provide technical guidance and mentorship to the team, fostering a culture of innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams, including PaaS, Security, Datacenter engineering, SRE, and application teams. Ensure seamless integration and alignment of solutions with organizational goals.

• Build resilient and scalable architecture, leading innovation and driving cost efficiency.

Qualifications

• Proficient in Operating Systems, Linux, Virtual Machines, Container technologies (Docker/Containerd), Cluster Management (Kubernetes), and OpenStack IaaS cloud platform. 

• Hands-on experience in multi-cluster networking using service mesh technologies like ISTIO, Envoy, or Consul. 

• Well-versed in deploying solutions on both private and public cloud infrastructures.

• In-depth understanding of containerization technologies, including Docker, Podman, and Rancher.

• Proficient with advanced technologies like ArgoCD, KubeVirt, and Cluster API (CAPI).

• In-depth knowledge and practical experience in Linux operating systems, internals, and command-line utilities.

• Proficient in multi-cluster metrics, observability, and operations with frameworks such as Grafana, and Prometheus.

• Proven expertise in optimizing CI/CD for streamlined Kubernetes deployment and configuration using GitOps and ArgoCD.

• Hands-on experience in public and/or private cloud environments, including OpenStack, Kubernetes, Azure, AWS, and GCP.

• Extensive experience in API, Microservices, network, and security architectures, incorporating design patterns.

• In-depth understanding of security protocols and products, including Active Directory, SAML, and OIDC/OAuth.

• Extensive experience in Container Networking (CNI), Container Storage (CSI), and Cont