Kubernetes DevOps Engineer

We are seeking a highly skilled Kubernetes DevOps Engineer to support and enhance enterprise-scale cloud infrastructure and platform services within an AWS environment. This is a 6+ month contract position based in Owings Mills, Maryland, with a hybrid schedule of two days onsite per week.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, manage, and optimize large-scale Kubernetes (EKS) environments supporting mission-critical applications.
• Develop and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions using Terraform and Ansible to provision and manage AWS infrastructure.
• Build automation tools, platform integrations, and operational capabilities using Python and Linux scripting.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex Kubernetes, AWS infrastructure, networking, and platform-related production issues.
• Support and enhance cloud-native platforms, including API management solutions (Apigee and AWS API Gateway) and Confluent Kafka services.
• Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines and DevSecOps best practices to improve deployment reliability and operational efficiency.
• Partner with engineering teams to deliver scalable, reliable, and secure platform solutions.
• Monitor platform health and performance using tools such as Prometheus, Grafana, and Splunk.
• Participate in incident response, root cause analysis, on-call rotation, and operational support activities.

Qualifications

Required

• 5-7+ years of experience in Cloud Engineering, Platform Engineering, AWS DevOps, or Site Reliability Engineering roles.
• Deep hands-on expertise managing, supporting, and optimizing Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service) and Kubernetes in large-scale production environments.
• 5+ years of Python and Linux shell scripting experience focused on automation and platform engineering.
• Strong experience designing and supporting AWS cloud infrastructure and cloud-native architectures.
• Advanced Infrastructure as Code (IaC) experience using Terraform and Ansible.
• Strong Python development experience focused on automation, platform engineering, integrations, and operational tooling.
• Experience implementing Kubernetes automation, deployment strategies, cluster scaling, performance tuning, and platform modernization initiatives.
• Strong knowledge of AWS services including EKS, EC2, IAM, ECR, CloudWatch, S3, Route53, VPC, Security Groups, and Load Balancers.
• Experience building and supporting CI/CD pipelines using GitLab, GitHub, Jenkins, ArgoCD, or related technologies.
• Advanced Linux systems administration experience and troubleshooting in production environments.
• Strong understanding of AWS networking, security, identity management, and cloud governance best practices.
• Experience with monitoring and observability platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, and Splunk.
• Experience supporting highly available, enterprise-scale applications and platforms in hybrid multi-cloud environments.

Preferred

• Experience modernizing or transforming Kubernetes/EKS platforms within large enterprise environments.
• Experience supporting API management platforms, including AWS API Gateway and Apigee.
• Exposure to Confluent Kafka or other event-driven messaging platforms.
• Kubernetes CKA certification or AWS Certifications (Associate Architect, DevOps Engineer, or Advanced Networking).