Senior Kubernetes Engineer

Title: Senior Kubernetes Engineer Location: Rockville, MD/Tysons, VA/Hybrid Duration: 12+ Months. Job Description: We are seeking an expert Kubernetes engineer to configure, deploy, and operate mission-critical Amazon EKS infrastructure supporting petabyte-scale data processing workloads. This role requires deep technical expertise in Kubernetes internals, large-scale cluster management, and Apache Spark optimization to support thousands of concurrent jobs processing large volumes of Bigdata. Core Responsibilities Design, deploy, and maintain production-grade Amazon EKS clusters architected for petabyte-scale data processing with high availability and fault toleranceOperate in air-gapped private VPC environments without internet access, managing secure package repositories and container registriesDebug and resolve complex distributed systems issues across EKS, Karpenter, and Spark, including scheduling bottlenecks, node scaling delays, and cascading failures under heavy loadImplement Karpenter consolidation and disruption policies balancing cost optimization with job resiliencyManage spot and on-demand instance strategies with robust node interruption handlingDefine and enforce ResourceQuotas, LimitRanges, and PriorityClasses to ensure fair resource distribution and prevent resource starvationConfigure persistent volume claims and provision container-native storage using Amazon EBS CSI driver for block storage and Amazon EFS CSI driver for shared file accessOptimize storage configurations for resiliency, high-throughput data processing workloadsImplement logging, alerting, and anomaly detection to identify provisioning failures, executor loss, and throughput degradation before broader system impactDesign fault-tolerant architectures with retry strategies, checkpointing, and graceful degradation patterns minimizing re-computation on failureDevelop and manage configs in a private VPC without internet access Preferred Qualifications Kubernetes certification (CKA, CKAD, or CKS) & AWS certificationsActive contributions to open-source Kubernetes, Karpenter, or Spark projectsFamiliarity with FinOps practices and cost optimization at scaleBackground in data engineering or analytics platforms