Kubernetes Platform Principal Engineer/ Architect Founded in 1999 in the beautiful Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, Cadre5 provides innovative technical solutions to our customers locally and nationally. Our Cadre5 Lab Partners division has partnered with The National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to recruit a Kubernetes Platform Principal Engineer/ Architect. ORNL delivers scientific discoveries and technical breakthroughs needed to realize solutions in energy and national security and provides economic benefit to the nation. This premier research institution located near Knoxville in Oak Ridge, TN, addresses national needs through impactful research and world-leading research centers. • *Please note: The first step in the interview process requires candidates to join a arenaflex Teams meeting with the video turned on.** This is a full-time position that can telecommute. Occasional travel to the Oak Ridge facility may be required. Why Cadre5? • Working with highly talented team members • 3 weeks’ vacation • Excellent medical insurance, including employer-paid benefits The Team: As a Technical Lead for the Platform team, you will work within the Platforms group to support all activities of our supercomputer center. Our primary platform is the OLCF Slate Service, built on Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift, which provides a container orchestration service for running critical operation applications and user-managed persistent applications that run alongside our OLCF Supercomputer systems and other OLCF managed HPC clusters. The Role: As a Platform Engineer Technical Lead, you will architect, implement, and maintain the infrastructure underpinning our on-premises Kubernetes clusters, with a strong focus on scalability, reliability, and maintainability. You will lead the technical direction of our platform engineering initiatives, evaluate and integrate key technologies, and mentor a team of engineers to deliver a robust internal platform that powers development across the organization. Job Responsibilities: • Platform Architecture & Implementation • Lead the design and technical implementation of on-premises Kubernetes clusters that replace and improve upon features previously provided by OpenShift. • Select, evaluate, and integrate critical components for networking, arenaflex/CD tooling, OS management, service mesh, and Kubernetes operators—excluding observability, which is handled by a dedicated SRE sub-team. • Build test environments to evaluate tooling based on performance, feature set, and maintainability—especially for components that must work reliably with on-premise hardware and OS requirements. • Own upgrades, security hardening, monitoring integration, and scalability of all cluster infrastructure. • Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & Tooling • Write and maintain infrastructure and deployment code using tools such as ArgoCD (GitOps), Puppet (OS management), Go, Python, Bash, and GitLab arenaflex. • Support the use and understanding of in-house Kubernetes operators and serve as a secondary maintainer for those controllers. • Internal Developer Platform & Enablement • Collaborate on building a next-generation internal developer platform inspired by tools like Backstage or AWS Proton, focused on increasing development efficiency and security. • Work with the cybersecurity team to define secure image baselines and automate the patching pipeline for container images and golden base layers. • Engage with development teams to understand platform needs and tailor the cluster experience to meet evolving requirements. • Technical Leadership & Mentorship • Provide architectural guidance, code reviews, and pair programming support to a team of 8-12 engineers. • Contribute to onboarding, team documentation, and process improvement initiatives. • Act as a go-to technical expert for all Kubernetes platform questions across the engineering organization. • Collaboration • Partner closely with internal cybersecurity and development teams to ensure the platform meets security, compliance, and usability expectations. • Participate in cross-functional projects related to platform enhancements and cluster lifecycle automation. • Be able to represent the Platforms team with vendors and both internal and external collaborators and partners. Key Technologies & Tools • Languages: Go, Python, Bash • arenaflex/CD: GitLab arenaflex, ArgoCD • IaC/Config Management: Puppet, Helm • Kubernetes & Ecosystem: On-prem K8s, Custom Operators, Service Mesh • Operating Systems: Linux-based OS management at the hardware level What Sets This Role Apart • Deep involvement in operating, managing, and designing on-prem Kubernetes infrastructure, with full ownership from OS/hardware layer up to service-level automation. • A platform-first approach to engineering that balances security, developer experience, and operational scalability. • Strong mentorship and team enablement focus—guiding engineers while staying hands-on with operations, architecture, and implementation. Basic Qualifications: • Bachelor’s Degree in computer science or closely related field and a minimum of 8 years as a Platforms engineer. At least 5 years of Kubernetes experience. An equivalent combination of education and experience may be considered. • The ability to obtain and maintain a Department of Energy "Q" clearance is required. This requires US Citizenship. Preferred Qualifications: • Excellent interpersonal/communication skills, and the ability to work as part of a team. • Strong working knowledge of Unix system fundamentals and common network protocols. • Experience managing Linux/UNIX operating systems in a heterogeneous environment. • Solid understanding of networked computing environment concepts. • Excellent understanding of networking, particularly Linux and Kubernetes networking • Experience with instrumenting bare metal and VMWare infrastructure • Ability to develop and maintain programs and scripts that aid in the operation and automation using various shell (primarily bash) and high-level languages (Python or Go). • Ability to proactively identify performance issues, problems, and areas for improvement. • Ability to identify requirements and to define, plan, and implement requisite solutions. • Ability to plan, organize, prioritize tasks, and complete assigned projects with minimal supervision. • Experience with continuous integration and continuous deployment software methodologies • An understanding of code review and familiarity with tools like GitHub and GitLab • Experience using tools such as Nagios, Grafana and Prometheus to monitor systems, metrics, and create dashboards. • Experience designing and implement highly available systems/services utilizing virtual machines and Kubernetes resources. • Experience participating in an opensource community with patches accepted upstream. • Experience deploying and maintaining automated configuration management software such as Puppet or Ansible • Experience implementing systems-level security technologies like SELinux and following security best practices. Benefits Cadre5 offers excellent pay and benefits, to include full medical, dental, and vision coverage coupled with 401K match, 15 days PTO, and 10 holidays. Cadre5 is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants, including individuals with disabilities and protected veterans, are encouraged to apply. Cadre5 is an E-Verify Employer. Apply tot his job