Principal Kubernetes Software Engineer

Job Description

Principal Kubernetes Software Engineer - Palo Alto, CA

VMware by Broadcom is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions.

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is a full‑stack Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform that provides a unified, self‑service experience for deploying and managing virtual machines (VMs) and containers across on‑premises and public cloud environments. It delivers consistent infrastructure and operations across a variety of clouds, enabling organizations to modernize their applications and optimize their cloud deployments. The Kubernetes Distribution team in VCF is focused on delivering up‑to‑date and secure Kubernetes and CNCF projects as packages for the vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) and vSphere Supervisor.

The Kubernetes Distribution team is looking for a Principal Kubernetes Engineer with deep expertise in Open Source Software (OSS) and Cloud‑Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) contribution processes and community. The role is focused on Kubernetes internals, and other related projects. In this role, you will design and perform business‑aligned contributions primarily for releases, security, manageability, scale, and integrations.

Ideal candidates are highly skilled in Go, familiar with Kubernetes technology and processes, and passionate about building technology for our customers with a global community of open source engineers.

• Leverage common patterns to develop fixes and features for Kubernetes and CNCF projects.
• Design customer‑oriented and community‑aligned features by building consensus through Key Enhancement Proposals (KEPs) or related open source contribution process.
• Ensure explicit Kubernetes version and feature compatibility with continual improvements to automation, pipelines and testing.
• Timely delivery of releases which meet SLAs, architecture, security, and compliance requirements.
• Leverage your own credibility through community interactions and positive contributions.
• Collaborate internally with stakeholders from product, security, infrastructure, and operations teams.

Within the first six months:

• Seen as an internal expert, advising and influencing across VCF.
• Understand the vision, architecture, and data model of the VKS and Kubernetes Distributions.
• Familiarity with common Kubernetes interfaces for runtime, networking, storage, and resource management.
• Production experience with deploying additional packages.
• Ensure different components and subsystems work well together.
• In‑depth understanding of Kubernetes extensibility and reconciliation logic.
• Design, implement, test, and deploy services developed in Go.
• Champion technologies that boost project speed and automation.
• Understand how to meet Broadcom and industry standards.

After six months+

• Align future customer needs with community interests in technical areas.
• Recognized technical and community leader across various projects.
• Design and gain approval for a Kubernetes KEP.
• Consistently make an impact on upstream projects through code, architecture, community management, and public representation.
• Introduce a new CNCF software component or make a material impact on other features for VCF.
• Define and implement process changes, clear technical debt, and make architectural improvements.
• Lead developer‑efficiency efforts and personally own improving the culture of innovation on the team.
• Mentor fellow engineers and coach them into influential voices in the department.

• Develop Kubernetes controllers and patterns, primarily written in Go.
• Collaborate with a global community of engineers in various CNCF open source projects.
• Deliver code changes to open source projects, satisfying contribution requirements.
• Work closely with management to understand priorities and advocate for them on the team.
• Collaborate internally with stakeholders, leads, and team members to make projects or contributions available as features.
• Lead high‑level epics, define requirements, and break work into individual work items, estimating and scoping.
• Write automated tests to validate and secure critical customer functionalities.
• Mentor…