Principal Systems Engineer - Containers (Remote)

The ideal candidate will serve as a technical leader, driving platform strategy, establishing best practices, leading engineering teams, and partnering with architects, security teams, developers, and business stakeholders to deliver a world-class container platform. This role is responsible for designing and managing highly available, scalable, and secure Kubernetes/OpenShift environments supporting mission-critical applications across hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures.

Overview:

This is a remote role open for multiple markets across the United States.

 

We are seeking a highly experienced Principal OpenShift Engineer to lead the architecture, administration, automation, security, and operational excellence of enterprise Red Hat OpenShift platforms. This role is responsible for designing and managing highly available, scalable, and secure Kubernetes/OpenShift environments supporting mission-critical applications across hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructures. 

The ideal candidate will serve as a technical leader, driving platform strategy, establishing best practices, leading engineering teams, and partnering with architects, security teams, developers, and business stakeholders to deliver a world-class container platform. 

Responsibilities:

Platform Architecture & Administration 

• Design, implement, upgrade, and maintain enterprise OpenShift clusters across on-premises and cloud environments. 

• Develop platform roadmaps and technical strategies aligned with business objectives. 

• Architect highly available, fault-tolerant, and scalable OpenShift environments. 

• Manage OpenShift cluster lifecycle activities including installation, upgrades, patching, backups, and disaster recovery. 

• Define standards for cluster provisioning, capacity planning, and workload optimization. 

Kubernetes & Container Platform Engineering 

• Serve as the subject matter expert (SME) for Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift technologies. 

• Administer cluster components including:  

• Control Plane, Worker Nodes, Operators, Ingress Controllers, Routes, Registries, Storage Classes, Service Mesh 

• Optimize cluster performance and resource utilization. 

• Troubleshoot complex container, networking, storage, and orchestration issues. 

Infrastructure Automation 

• Build Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions using:  

• Terraform, Ansible, Helm, ArgoCD, GitOps 

• Automate cluster deployments, configuration management, and operational tasks. 

• Develop reusable automation frameworks to improve platform reliability and consistency. 

Security & Compliance 

• Implement container security best practices and governance controls. 

• Configure:  

• RBAC, Security Context Constraints (SCC), Network Policies, Identity Management integrations.Secrets Management 

• Partner with cybersecurity teams to meet regulatory and compliance requirements. 

• Conduct vulnerability assessments and remediation activities. 

Monitoring & Reliability Engineering 

• Establish observability frameworks using:  

• Dynatrace, Alert manager, Elasticsearch, Splunk 

• Develop SLIs, SLOs, and operational dashboards. 

• Lead incident response, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement initiatives. 

• Support site reliability engineering (SRE) best practices. 

DevOps and CI/CD Enablement 

• Collaborate with development teams to onboard applications into OpenShift. 

• Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines using:  

• GitLab CI/CD, ArgoCD 

• Champion GitOps and cloud-native operational practices. 

• Improve deployment automation and developer self-service capabilities. 

Leadership & Strategic Responsibilities 

• Provide technical leadership for platform engineering and OpenShift operations teams. 

• Establish enterprise standards, governance frameworks, and operating procedures. 

• Mentor engineers and administrators across Kubernetes and container technologies. 

• Lead technical reviews, architecture discussions, and platform modernization initiatives. 

• Influence enterprise cloud and container platform strategies. 

Qualifications:

Bachelor's Degree and 10 years of experience in Technical Hands-On Leader of Cloud Teams OR High School Diploma or GED and 14 years of experience in Technical Hands-On Leader of Cloud Teams

 

Preferred Experience

• 10+ years of infrastructure engineering, systems administration, or platform engineering experience. 
• 7+ years of Kubernetes/OpenShift administration experience. 
• Experience managing large-scale production OpenShift environments. 
• Proven experience supporting highly regulated, mission-critical applications. 
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise platform initiatives. 

Technical Skills 

OpenShift & Kubernetes 

• Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP), Kubernetes Administration, OpenShift Operators, OpenShift Service Mesh, OpenShift Pipelines, OpenShift GitOps, OpenShift Data Foundation (ODF) 

Operating Systems 

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), Linux Administration, System Performance Tuning 

Cloud Platforms 

• One of the public Cloud, Hybrid Cloud Architectures 

Automation & DevOps 

• Terraform, Ansible, Helm, ArgoCD 

Networking 

• DNS, Load Balancers, TCP/IP, Ingress/Egress, VPN, Service Mesh, Istio 

Storage Technologies 

• Ceph, NFS, SAN/NAS, Persistent Volumes, CSI Drivers 

Monitoring & Logging 

• Prometheus, Grafana, Dynatrace/App Dynamics, Splunk, Open Telemetry 

Preferred Certifications 

• Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Administration 
• Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA) 
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) 
• Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) 
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect 
• Azure Administrator Associate 
• Azure Solutions Architect Expert 

This job posting is expected to remain active for 45 days from the initial posting date listed above. If it is necessary to extend this deadline, the posting will remain active as appropriate. Job postings may come down early due to business need or a high volume of applicants.

 

The base pay for this position is generally between $170,000 and $199,000. Actual starting base pay will be determined based on skills, experience, location, and other non-discriminatory factors permitted by law. For some roles, total compensation may also include variable incentives, bonuses, benefits, and/or other awards as outlined in the offer of employment.

 

Benefits are an integral part of total rewards and First Citizens Bank is committed to providing a competitive, thoughtfully designed and quality benefits program to meet the needs of our associates. More information can be found at https://jobs.firstcitizens.com/benefits.