Sr Kubernetes Platform Engineer

We are the movers of the world and the makers of the future. We get up every day, roll up our sleeves and build a better world -- together. At Ford, we’re all a part of something bigger than ourselves. Are you ready to change the way the world moves?

Join a team building an enterprise-grade private cloud platform from the ground up, treating on-premise and hybrid infrastructure as a scalable, living software product rather than a set of manually operated systems. This role goes beyond configuring platforms — the candidate will help build them, developing and scaling Open Shift/Kubernetes clusters end-to-end through Git Ops practices.

The ideal candidate has a strong engineering (not purely operational) mindset, with hands‑on coding and automation skills. This includes experience with Git Ops tools (Argo CD, Github Actions, Tekton), Infrastructure as Code (YAML/IaC), Ansible playbooks, and proficiency in Go and/or Python (or a similar object‑oriented systems language), along with API development experience. A deep understanding of Kubernetes architecture, its components, and Operators is essential.

The role blends platform engineering, infrastructure automation, and developer enablement, applying software engineering best practices to reliability, scalability, and self‑service capabilities for application teams.

• Design, build, architect, and maintain Open Shift/Kubernetes platforms for on-premise, bare‑metal, and hybrid cloud environments, including virtualized (Open Shift Virtualization/OSV) and containerized workloads.

• Develop and support custom Kubernetes/Open Shift Operators, APIs, and developer tooling to enable seamless, self‑service platform capabilities for application teams.

• Write clean, testable, and robust infrastructure automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using Go, Python, and Ansible to eliminate manual toil and drive the private cloud transformation.

• Implement and manage Git Ops‑based CI/CD deployment pipelines using tools such as Argo CD, Tekton (Open Shift Pipelines), Git Hub, Helm, Kustomize, and related build tools.

• Enhance platform reliability through monitoring, alerting, observability, and automated recovery/self‑healing mechanisms, applying a software‑driven SRE approach (including auto‑scaling and disaster recovery automation).

• Build and integrate observability solutions and dashboards using Prometheus, Grafana, Dynatrace/App Dynamics, and logging platforms (ELK/Splunk).

• Support distributed systems, microservices, API gateways, and service mesh (e.g., Istio) architectures, including secrets management (e.g., Hashi Corp Vault) and Zero‑Trust security models.

• Explore and integrate emerging capabilities such as AI/ML pipelines (e.g., Vertex AI) and chaos engineering into private cloud operations.

• Collaborate closely with architects and application teams to improve platform usability, share ideas, and tackle platform constraints.

• Mentor team members (junior and senior developers), champion coding standards, and promote best practices in software craftsmanship, platform engineering, and Git Ops workflows.

• 6+ years of experience in Platform Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), or Dev Sec Ops , with a strong automation and software development skillset (engineering mindset, not purely operational).

• Deep, hands‑on expertise with Kubernetes/Open Shift (OCP) platform administration and internals — cluster builds, upgrades, and integrations — implemented entirely through code, scripts, and automation (not manual/GUI‑driven).

• Strong object‑oriented programming background with demonstrated development skills in Go and/or Python (or a similar systems language); comfortable as a hands‑on developer/individual contributor.

• Practical…