Senior Kubernetes Software Engineer

Job Description

Senior 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.

This position is ideal for engineers who are highly skilled in Go, familiar with Kubernetes technology and processes and passionate about talking about and 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

• You're seen as an internal expert, advising and influencing across VCF
• You understand the vision, architecture, and data model of the VKS and Kubernetes Distributions
• You have familiarity with common Kubernetes interfaces for runtime, networking, storage, and resource management
• You have production experience with deploying additional packages
• You ensure different components and subsystems work well together
• You have an in‑depth understanding of Kubernetes extensibility and reconciliation logic
• You will demonstrably design, implement, test, and deploy services developed in Go
• You champion technologies that boost project speed and automation.
• You understand how to meet Broadcom and industry standards

• You're great at aligning future customer needs with community interests in technical areas
• You're a recognized technical and community leader across various projects
• You designed and got approval for a Kubernetes KEP
• You've consistently made an impact on upstream projects through your contributions to code, architecture, community management, and public representation
• You made available a new CNCF software component or had material impact for other features for VCF
• You define and implement process changes, helping to clear out technical debt and make architectural improvements
• You lead developer efficiency efforts and take personal ownership of improving the culture of innovation of the team
• You mentor fellow engineers in their role, and coaching them into influential voices in the department

• Most of your time will be developing using Kubernetes controllers and patterns, mostly written in Go
• You will collaborate with a global community of engineers in various CNCF open source projects
• You will be responsible for delivering your code changes to open source projects and satisfying any requirements for contribution
• You'll work closely with management to understand priorities and advocate for them on the team.
• You will collaborate internally with set…