EKS​/Kubernetes Engineer

EKS/Kubernetes Engineer

We are seeking a highly skilled EKS/Kubernetes Engineer to configure, deploy, and operate mission-critical Amazon EKS infrastructure supporting petabyte-scale data processing workloads. This role requires deep expertise in Kubernetes internals, large-scale cluster operations, and Apache Spark optimization to support thousands of concurrent jobs processing massive volumes of data. This is a long-term contract opportunity with a hybrid work schedule requiring candidates to work onsite three days per week in one of the following locations:
Jersey City, NJ;
New York City, NY;
Rockville, MD; or Northern Virginia.

• Design, deploy, and maintain production-grade Amazon EKS clusters optimized for petabyte-scale data processing, ensuring high availability, resiliency, and fault tolerance.
• Manage and operate Kubernetes environments within secure, air-gapped private VPCs, including administration of private container registries and package repositories.
• Troubleshoot and resolve complex distributed systems issues across EKS, Karpenter, and Apache Spark, including scheduling bottlenecks, node provisioning delays, and large-scale workload failures.
• Implement and optimize Karpenter consolidation and disruption policies to balance infrastructure efficiency, cost management, and workload stability.
• Develop and manage Spot and On-Demand instance strategies, including robust interruption handling and workload recovery mechanisms.
• Define and enforce Resource Quotas, Limit Ranges, and Priority Classes to ensure efficient resource allocation and prevent resource contention.
• Configure and manage persistent storage solutions using Amazon EBS CSI Driver and Amazon EFS CSI Driver to support high-performance data processing workloads.
• Optimize storage architecture for throughput, scalability, durability, and application resiliency.
• Design and implement proactive monitoring, logging, alerting, and anomaly detection solutions to identify and remediate system issues before they impact production operations.
• Architect fault-tolerant solutions utilizing checkpointing, retry mechanisms, and graceful degradation strategies to minimize downtime and recomputation.
• Develop, maintain, and manage Kubernetes configurations and operational processes within highly secured, internet-restricted environments.

• Extensive hands-on experience designing, deploying, and supporting Kubernetes platforms in enterprise production environments.
• Deep expertise with Amazon EKS and cloud-native technologies.
• Strong experience with Kubernetes cluster autoscaling solutions, including Karpenter.
• Proven experience supporting large-scale Apache Spark workloads and distributed systems.
• Strong troubleshooting and performance tuning skills across Kubernetes, AWS infrastructure, networking, and storage.
• Experience working within highly secure, restricted-access, or air-gapped environments.
• Strong understanding of Kubernetes resource management, scheduling, observability, and production operations.

• Kubernetes certifications such as CKA, CKAD, or CKS.
• AWS certifications.
• Experience contributing to open-source Kubernetes, Karpenter, or Apache Spark projects.
• Knowledge of Fin Ops methodologies and cloud cost optimization at scale.
• Background supporting data engineering, analytics, or large-scale data platform environments.