IT Infrastructure Engineer V - Cloud Kubernetes Developer

IT Infrastructure Engineer V - Cloud Kubernetes Developer

The Container Platform and Adoption Services team at Kaiser Permanente (KP) accelerates enterprise application modernization by enabling tenants to adopt container platforms such as OpenShift (on-prem) and Azure AKS (cloud). We partner with application teams across the enterprise to containerize workloads, design cloud-native deployment patterns, and implement automation for CI/CD, high availability, and failover.

Our mission is to simplify the developer experience, reduce onboarding friction, and ensure enterprise applications are production-ready with best-in-class resiliency, security, and compliance. The team also provides L3 engineering support and leads offshore engineers delivering platform enhancements and operational improvements.

The Cloud Developer (Cloud Native Application Developer) plays a hybrid technical-lead role at the intersection of DevOps and platform engineering. The developer will be hands-on in designing and implementing platform feature enhancements, onboarding automation, and container adoption solutions while also leading offshore engineers to deliver high-quality platform capabilities.

This role requires flexibility to collaborate across time zones (overlapping IST) and participation in 24/7 on-call rotations for production escalation support. The right candidate will thrive in a dynamic environment that balances technical design, implementation, mentorship, and operational excellence.

Responsibilities include:

• Partnering with tenant application teams to analyze existing monolithic workloads and guide them through refactoring and migration to container platforms.
• Designing and implementing Dockerfiles, Kubernetes/OpenShift manifests, Helm/Kustomize configurations, and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, ArgoCD).
• Enhancing and maintaining platform capabilities by enabling new Kubernetes features and improving container platform adoption and onboarding efficiency.
• Developing and integrating CI/CD workflows and GitOps automation across multiple toolchains and environments.
• Providing technical guidance on resiliency, scalability, HA, and failover design for both stateless and stateful applications.
• Supporting S3 Object Store and Operator-based workload onboarding, automation, and lifecycle management.
• Leading and mentoring offshore engineers, ensuring delivery of platform enhancements, adherence to standards, and quality engineering practices.
• Providing L3 engineering support-including troubleshooting complex production issues, root cause analysis, and performance optimization.
• Collaborating with Platform Engineering, SRE, and Security teams to ensure all solutions meet compliance, monitoring, and operational readiness standards.
• Participating in 24/7 on-call rotations for production support escalations and incident response.
• Driving continuous improvement through documentation, reusable frameworks, and automation of onboarding processes.

This senior level employee is primarily responsible for providing expert technical advice on IT infrastructure for assigned systems, setting the technical direction for infrastructure solutions, and for serving as a technical expert for project teams while mentoring and advising others in all system development lifecycle phases.

Essential responsibilities include:

• Conducting or overseeing business-specific projects by applying deep expertise in subject area; promoting adherence to all procedures and policies; developing work plans to meet business priorities and deadlines; determining and carrying out processes and methodologies; coordinating and delegating resources to accomplish organizational goals; partnering internally and externally to make effective business decisions; solving complex problems; escalating issues or risks, as appropriate; monitoring progress and results; recognizing and capitalizing on improvement opportunities; evaluating recommendations made; and influencing the completion of project tasks by others.
• Practicing self-leadership and promoting learning in others by building relationships with cross-functional stakeholders; communicating information and providing advice to drive projects forward; influencing team members within assigned unit; listening and responding to, seeking, and addressing performance feedback; adapting to competing demands and new responsibilities; providing feedback to others, including upward feedback to leadership and mentoring junior team members; creating and executing plans to capitalize on strengths and improve opportunity areas; and adapting to and learning from change, difficulties, and feedback.
• As part of the IT Engineering job family, this position is responsible for leveraging DEVOPS, and both Waterfall and Agile practices, to design, develop, and deliver resilient, secure, multi-channel, high-volume, high-transaction, on/off-premise, cloud-based solutions.
• Providing consultation and expert technical advice on IT infrastructure planning, engineering, and architecture for assigned systems by assessing the implications of IT strategies on infrastructure capabilities.
• Providing some recommendations and input on options, risks, costs, and benefits for systems designs.
• Leveraging partnerships with IT teams and key business partners to troubleshoot complex systems.
• Serving as a functional expert and collaborating with architects and software engineers to ensure functional specifications are converted into flexible, scalable, and maintainable system designs.
• Translating business requirements, and functional and non-functional requirements, into technical specifications that support integrated and sustainable designs for complex or high impact infrastructure systems by partnering with Business Analysts to understand business needs and functional specifications.
• Ensuring system designs adhere to company architecture standards.
• Building partnerships with counterparts in various IT Teams (e.g., database, operations, technical support) throughout system development and implementation.
• Serving as a technical expert for project teams throughout the implementation and maintenance of assigned enterprise infrastructure systems by defining and overseeing the documentation of detailed standards (e.g., guidelines, processes, procedures) for the introduction and maintenance of services.
• Mentoring other technical resources throughout infrastructure systems development.
• Reviewing and validating technical specifications and documentation for complex or multi-dimensional solutions.
• Leading the development and modification of solutions by identifying technical solutions to business problems.
• Collaborating with business leaders, Solutions, and lead enterprise architects to review business drivers, and establish a foundation for enterprise systems planning.
• Reviewing benchmarking results, and providing information to support current and future infrastructure needs and projects to IT leadership. Providing preliminary conclusions.
• Benchmarking and evaluating IT trends and technologies to identify opportunities and considerations that impact ROI.
• Making recommendations on resources required to maintain service levels and meet new demands.
• Guiding and driving physical architecture design for new initiatives.

Minimum qualifications include:

• Minimum two (2) years in a technical leadership role with or without direct reports.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, CIS, or related field and minimum eight (8) years experience in an IT operations environment with technical experience in distributed technologies, systems development, and/or networking.
• Additional equivalent work experience may be substituted for the degree requirement.

Preferred qualifications include:

• 6+ years of IT experience with proven success in application development, containerization, and cloud adoption.
• 3+ years hands-on experience with Kubernetes/OpenShift, including designing manifests, deployments, and service patterns for stateless and stateful applications.
• Strong experience with Docker, Helm, Kustomize, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD, and GitOps workflows.
• Familiarity with CI/CD, DevOps automation, and observability tools (logging, monitoring, tracing).
• Development experience with Java, Node.js, Python, or similar languages.
• Strong understanding of application resiliency patterns (scaling, HA, DR).
• Experience leading or mentoring engineers, especially managing offshore delivery and providing L3 platform engineering support.
• Excellent collaboration and communication skills, with flexibility to work overlapping IST hours and participate in 24×7 support rotations.