Kubernetes Platform Principal Engineer​/Architect

Join to apply for the Kubernetes Platform Principal Engineer/ Architect role at Cadre5

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.

This is a full‑time position that can telecommute. Occasional travel to the Oak Ridge facility may be required.

• Working with highly talented team members
• 3 weeks’ vacation
• Excellent medical insurance, including employer‑paid benefits

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 Open Shift, 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.

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.

• Platform Architecture & Implementation
  • Lead the design and technical implementation of on‑premises Kubernetes clusters that replace and improve upon features previously provided by Open Shift.
  • Select, evaluate, and integrate critical components for networking, CI/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 (Git Ops), Puppet (OS management), Go, Python, Bash, and Git Lab CI.
  • 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.