Kubernetes Platforms Principal Architect

Select how often (in days) to receive an alert:

The National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL), which hosts several of the world’s most powerful computer systems, is seeking highly qualified individuals to play a key role in improving the security, performance, and reliability of theNCCS computing infrastructure which supports multiple highly ranked Top
500 Supercomputers, including the world’s first exaflop system, Frontier.

The Team:

The HPC Platforms design, manage, and operate Kubernetes clusters that support our supercomputing center’s mission. Our primary platform is the OLCF Slate Service, a container orchestration platform built on Rancher Kubernetes Engine 2 (RKE2). Slate hosts critical operational services and user-managed persistent applications that are deployed alongside and integrated with OLCF supercomputing systems and other OLCF-managed HPC clusters.

The Role:

As a Kubernetes Platform Principal Engineer / Architect and 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.

Major Duties/Responsibilities:

• Lead the architecture, design, implementation, and lifecycle management of on-premises Kubernetes (RKE2) clusters.
• Evaluate, select, integrate, and standardize core platform components for networking, CI/CD, operating-system management, service mesh, and Kubernetes operators. Observability services are owned by a dedicated SRE sub-team, this role will ensure platform components integrate effectively with those services.
• Build and maintain test environments to evaluate candidate technologies for performance, functionality, operational reliability, and maintainability, particularly where integration with on-premises hardware and operating-system requirements is critical.
• Lead cluster upgrade strategy and execution, security hardening, scalability planning, and integration with monitoring and observability services.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & Tooling
  • Develop and maintain infrastructure, configuration, and deployment automation using technologies such as Argo CD and Git Ops workflows, Puppet, Go, Python, Bash, and Git Lab CI.
  • Establish and promote reusable automation patterns, configuration standards, and engineering practices for operating Kubernetes clusters at scale.
  • Support adoption and effective use of internally developed Kubernetes operators and serve as a secondary maintainer for designated controllers.
• Internal Developer Platform & Enablement
  • Collaborate on the design and delivery of a next-generation internal developer platform, informed by capabilities offered by tools such as Backstage and AWS Proton, to improve developer productivity, platform consistency, and security.
  • Partner with the cybersecurity team to define secure container-image baselines and automate image and golden base image workflows.
  • 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.
  • Mentor engineers in Kubernetes, platform engineering, automation, and operational best practices.
  • Contribute to onboarding, team documentation, and process improvement initiatives.
  • Serve as a primary technical resource for Kubernetes platform architecture, operations, and…