Principal Kubernetes Software Engineer

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 focuses 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 seeks a Principal Kubernetes Engineer with deep expertise in open‑source software (OSS) and Cloud‑Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) contribution processes and community. The role focuses on Kubernetes internals and related projects, designing and delivering business‑aligned contributions for releases, security, manageability, scale, and integrations. Ideal candidates excel in Go, Kubernetes technology, and community engagement.

• Develop fixes and features for Kubernetes and CNCF projects using common patterns.
• Design customer‑oriented and community‑aligned features, building consensus through Key Enhancement Proposals (KEPs) or related open‑source contribution processes.
• Ensure explicit Kubernetes version and feature compatibility while improving automation, pipelines, and testing.
• Deliver releases on time that meet SLAs, architecture, security, and compliance requirements.
• Leverage credibility through community interactions and positive contributions.
• Collaborate with stakeholders from product, security, infrastructure, and operations teams.

• Within six months: be recognized as an internal expert, understand VCF architecture, Kubernetes interfaces, and production deployment of additional packages, ensuring subsystem cohesion, deep extensibility knowledge, Go‑based service delivery, and leadership of project speed and automation.
• After six months: align future customer needs with community interests, lead as a technical and community leader, author approved Kubernetes KEPs, make measurable upstream contributions, define architectural improvements, mentor teammates, and champion developer efficiency.

• Develop Kubernetes controllers and patterns in Go.
• Collaborate with the global CNCF open‑source community, delivering code changes and satisfying contribution requirements.
• Advocate for priorities with management and stakeholders.
• Own high‑level epics, define requirements, break down work, estimate, and scope.
• Write automated tests to validate and secure critical customer functionalities.
• Mentor junior engineers and provide technical leadership on complex problems.
• Identify key issues, anticipate problems, reduce costs, improve quality, and drive process improvement.
• Serve on‑call for production issue triage, troubleshooting, and mitigation.

• Expertise in Kubernetes and at least one material contribution to a CNCF or OSS project.
• Experience with one or more cloud platform architectures.
• Leadership experience in system software projects or teams.
• Strong knowledge of distributed systems, databases, algorithms, and data structures.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Bachelor’s degree plus 12+ years of experience, or Master’s degree plus 10+ years.

• vSphere experience.
• Deep knowledge of container, kernel, packaging, and operating‑system functionality.
• Operational experience with Kubernetes in production.
• Material contributions to 2+ CNCF projects or Kubernetes SIG projects (e.g., Kubernetes, Cluster API, Container
  
  D/RunC, Cluster Autoscaler, Metrics Server, ArgoCD, Cert manager, Flux, Gateway API, Etcd, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, KEDA, Kubeadm, Kubeflow, Kuve-vip, Kyverno, OPA/Gatekeeper, Open telemetry).

Palo Alto, CA, USA

The annual base salary range is $127,100 – $226,000. This position is eligible for an annual discretionary bonus and equity awards per corporate plans. Broadcom provides a comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, vision, 401(K) with company matching, Employee Stock Purchase Program, Employee Assistance Program, company‑paid holidays, paid sick leave, vacation time, and compliance with Paid Family Leave and other leave laws.

Mid‑Senior level

Full‑time

Engineering and Information Technology

Semiconductor Manufacturing