Kubernetes Engineer

The Aerospace Corporation is the trusted partner to the nation's space programs, solving the hardest problems and providing unmatched technical expertise. As the operator of a federally funded research and development center (FFRDC), we are broadly engaged across all aspects of space—delivering innovative solutions that span satellite, launch, ground, and cyber systems for defense, civil and commercial customers. When you join our team, you'll be part of a special collection of problem solvers, thought leaders, and innovators.

Join us and take your place in space.

The Aerospace Corporation is seeking a skilled Kubernetes Engineer (Technical and Cloud Computing Engineer Staff IV/V) with expertise in Kubernetes, Linux, programming, and automation. In this role, you will be responsible for maintaining both on‑premise and cloud‑based Kubernetes clusters, providing essential support to our engineering team. As part of a multidisciplinary infrastructure team, you will manage multiple clusters used for technical analyses, including space launch telemetry analysis.

You will collaborate closely with rocket scientists and engineers, contributing to the development of innovative solutions to complex challenges within the space enterprise, supporting critical national space assets. This position requires a strong sense of shared responsibility and ownership, working alongside cross‑functional team members to achieve our mission objectives. The selected candidate will be required to work full‑time on‑site at our facility in El Segundo, CA or Chantilly, VA.

• Manage Kubernetes for on‑prem and in AWS production environments with end‑to‑end responsibilities of deployment, upgrade, patching, performance tuning, capacity planning, and backups/DR.
• Conduct frequent full security patching of all layers of Kubernetes infrastructure while maintaining very high uptime.
• Own and engineer production AWS and Kubernetes services.
• Identify and resolve full Kubernetes stack engineering problems independently.
• Ensure successful real‑time analysis of telemetry data from space launch partners such as SpaceX, United Launch Alliance (ULA), and Blue Origin.
• Provide after‑hours support for Kubernetes infrastructure troubleshooting during launch events.
• Support scientists and engineers running workloads and apps in Kubernetes.
• Provide Linux expertise and troubleshooting.
• Evaluate and test new products and technologies.
• Use code to enhance and automate operations.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, STEM, or IT, or equivalent experience.
• Minimum 5 years of increasingly responsible and relevant professional experience supporting a high availability enterprise environment.
• Minimum 2 years of hands‑on experience managing existing Kubernetes environments, with responsibilities of deployment, upgrade, patching, and backups.
• Full ownership and engineering responsibility of production AWS and Kubernetes services.
• Ability to identify and resolve engineering problems independently.
• Experience in Linux systems administration, including configuration, for an enterprise environment.
• Strong understanding of networking fundamentals.
• Experience automating repetitive tasks with scripting or Dev Ops tools.
• Ability to maintain a Secret security clearance and obtain and maintain a TS/SCI security clearance, issued by the U.S. government.
• U.S. citizenship required to obtain a security clearance.
• Additional qualifications for Staff V:
• Minimum 7 years of increasingly responsible and relevant professional experience in AWS, Linux, and IaC.
• Experience architecting and deploying secure AWS and/or Kubernetes environments from scratch.
• Experience with performance tuning and capacity planning for AWS and/or Kubernetes environments.

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA), or Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE). Preferred.
• Experience deploying Kubernetes clusters using Rancher.
• Experience deploying/supporting persistent container storage on Kubernetes (Portworx preferred).
• Experience in Linux performance tuning and security hardening for an enterprise DoD environment.
• Experience with VMWare, Hyper‑V, or Harvester.
• Experience with automated provisioning, configuration management, Infrastructure‑as‑Code, Git Ops (e.g., ArgoCD, Ansible, Terraform, Puppet, Packer, Bash, Golang, Python).
• Experience with Agile and Scrum.
• A current and active TS/SCI security clearance issued by the U.S. government.