Kubernetes Platform & DevOps Engineer

Job Description

Leidos has an immediate opening for a Kubernetes Platform & DevOps Engineer to design, build, automate, and sustain secure container-based platforms supporting software development, systems integration, testing, and mission-critical production environments. This role combines hands-on platform engineering, DevOps engineering, infrastructure automation, and development/test laboratory engineering, with Kubernetes-based containerization as the primary application runtime model.

You will be a key contributor to the engineering of reusable, highly available Kubernetes platform capabilities that allow product teams to rapidly deploy, validate, and operate containerized applications across on-premises, disconnected/air-gapped, and hybrid-cloud environments. The position will work closely with software developers, systems engineers, network engineers, cybersecurity personnel, and platform architects throughout the system lifecycle, from development laboratories and CI/CD pipelines through integration, staging, and production operations.

A key focus is experience with, or the ability to rapidly become proficient in, the Leidos Secure Runtime Environment (LSRE) and its use as a secure runtime foundation for containerized applications. The engineer will help establish and maintain standardized platform baselines and deployment patterns incorporating Kubernetes and supporting platform services such as MinIO object storage, Istio service mesh, Kafka event streaming, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL.

Primary Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, configure, automate, and support the lifecycle management of enterprise Kubernetes clusters and containerized application platforms.
• Engineer secure, repeatable Kubernetes environments for development, integration, test, staging, demonstration, cyber testing, and production use.
• Implement, integrate, and sustain LSRE-based platform capabilities and standardized secure runtime configurations for application teams.
• Design and maintain reusable Kubernetes deployment patterns using containers, Helm charts, operators, manifests, configuration management, and Git-based version control.
• Integrate and operate platform services including MinIO, Istio, Kafka, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL; establish patterns for availability, persistence, backup/recovery, upgrades, security, and observability.
• Develop automated provisioning and lifecycle-management solutions using Infrastructure as Code and configuration automation such as Terraform, Ansible, Helm, Bash, Python, or equivalent technologies.
• Implement container image management, registry integration, image scanning, signing, software supply-chain controls, and repeatable release processes.
• Design secure Kubernetes networking including ingress/egress, load balancing, DNS, network policies, segmentation, service discovery, TLS, and Istio-based service-to-service communications.
• Build and maintain development and system-integration laboratories, including isolated or disconnected environments used for software development, regression testing, cybersecurity testing, hardware integration, and customer acceptance testing.
• Develop automation to rapidly provision, reset, upgrade, and reproduce complex containerized engineering environments.
• Gather and analyze platform metrics, logs, traces, and alerts to optimize performance, availability, reliability, capacity, and application behavior.
• Troubleshoot complex issues spanning Kubernetes, containers, Linux, storage, databases, service mesh, messaging, networking, security, and application infrastructure.
• Support platform architecture reviews, modernization initiatives, disaster recovery, backup strategies, and high-availability designs.
• Contribute to platform roadmaps and technical backlogs for new capabilities, upgrades, patches, security remediation, and technical debt.
• Collaborate with engineers, help remove technical roadblocks, and promote DevSecOps, automation, Agile engineering, and operational best practices across cross-functional teams.

Basic Qualifications

• 8+ years of relevant professional experience in DevOps, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, site reliability engineering, systems engineering, or a related technical discipline. A bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Information Systems, or a related technical discipline may be considered in combination with relevant experience but is not required.
• 4+ years of hands-on DevOps, platform engineering, infrastructure engineering, or site reliability engineering experience supporting complex enterprise systems.
• Strong hands-on experience deploying, administering, upgrading, and troubleshooting Kubernetes clusters and containerized workloads in enterprise environments.
• Hands-on experience with container technologies such as Docker, containerd, or CRI-O and with Kubernetes packaging/deployment technologies such as Helm.
• Experience designing highly available, persistent container platforms, including Kubernetes storage classes, persistent volumes, CSI integration, backup/recovery, and capacity planning.
• Hands-on experience with Infrastructure as Code and automation using Terraform, Ansible, Helm, Bash, Python, or similar technologies.
• Experience supporting CI/CD processes and tools such as Jenkins, GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, or equivalent platforms.
• Working knowledge of Git, branching/version-control practices, and GitOps-oriented deployment patterns.
• Experience with Linux system administration and strong understanding of compute, storage, networking, and distributed-system fundamentals.
• Strong enterprise networking knowledge including TCP/IP, VLANs, routing, switching, DNS, DHCP, HTTP/HTTPS, SSL/TLS, load balancing, and VPN technologies.
• Good understanding of information-security and DevSecOps practices, including RBAC, secrets, certificates, vulnerability management, and secure software supply chains.
• Experience building or supporting development, integration, test, staging, or production environments and supporting automated software verification activities.
• Excellent troubleshooting and root-cause-analysis skills across application, platform, network, storage, database, and operating-system layers.
• Ability to independently own and drive technical efforts while collaborating effectively within multi-disciplined engineering teams.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills and the ability to produce clear technical documentation.

Preferred Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with the Leidos Secure Runtime Environment (LSRE), including deployment, administration, integration, platform hardening, upgrades, troubleshooting, or application onboarding.
• Demonstrated experience operating Kubernetes in air-gapped, disconnected, restricted-network, or mission-critical environments.
• Hands-on experience deploying and operating MinIO for S3-compatible object storage, including persistent storage, high availability, security, backup, and lifecycle considerations.
• Hands-on experience with Istio service mesh, including ingress/egress gateways, traffic management, mTLS, policy, and observability.
• Hands-on experience deploying and operating Kafka-based event-streaming platforms in Kubernetes.
• Hands-on experience deploying, operating, backing up, upgrading, and troubleshooting MongoDB and PostgreSQL in containerized or Kubernetes environments.
• Experience with Kubernetes operators and stateful workloads, including StatefulSets and production-grade persistent storage patterns.
• Experience with cloud technologies such as AWS, Azure, or GCP and hybrid deployment patterns.
• Experience leading Agile/Kanban teams, planning technical roadmaps, grooming backlogs, estimating work, and mentoring engineers.

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo - because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 - and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

For U.S. Positions: While subject to change based on business needs, Leidos reasonably anticipates that this job requisition will remain open for at least 3 days with an anticipated close date of no earlier than 3 days after the original posting date as listed above.

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.