Kubernetes Software Engineer

Founded in 1999 in the beautiful Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee, Cadre5 provides innovative technical solutions to our customers locally and nationally. Our Cadre5 Lab Partners division has partnered with The National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) to recruit a Kubernetes Software Engineer for the HPC Platform teams, you will work to support all activities of our supercomputer center. The primary platform is the OLCF Slate Service, built on Kubernetes and RKE2, which provides a container orchestration service for running critical operation applications and user-managed persistent applications that run alongside the OLCF Supercomputer systems and other OLCF managed HPC clusters.

ORNL delivers scientific discoveries and technical breakthroughs needed to realize solutions in energy and national security and provides economic benefit to the nation. This premier research institution located near Knoxville in Oak Ridge, TN, addresses national needs through impactful research and world-leading research centers.

This is a full-time, permanent position that can telecommute. Occasional travel to the Oak Ridge facility may be required.

• Please note: The first step in the interview process requires candidates to join a Microsoft Teams meeting with the video turned on.**

Why Cadre5?

• Working with highly talented team members
• 3 weeks’ vacation
• Excellent medical insurance, including employer-paid benefits

Overview:

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 the NCCS computing infrastructure which supports multiple highly ranked Top500 Supercomputers, including the world’s first exaflop system, Frontier.

Job Responsibilities:

• Custom Kubernetes operator development
• Design, implement, maintain, modify, and test custom Kubernetes operators written in Go and/or Ansible
• Enhance existing software development processes, practices, and standards. test environments to evaluate tooling based on performance, feature set, and maintainability
• Write and maintain infrastructure and deployment code using tools such as ArgoCD (GitOps), Puppet (OS management), Go, Python, Bash, Ansible, Terraform, and GitLab CI.
• Engage with development teams to understand platform needs and tailor the cluster experience to meet evolving requirements.
• Act as a go-to technical expert for all Kubernetes custom operator questions across the engineering organization.
• Contribute to onboarding, team documentation, and process improvement initiatives.
• Partner closely with internal cybersecurity and development teams to ensure the platform custom operators meets security, compliance, and usability expectations.
• Participate in an on-call rotation providing 24-hour, 7-day support and off-hours maintenance windows

Key Technologies & Tools

• Languages: Go, Python, Bash
• CI/CD: GitLab CI, ArgoCD
• IaC/Config Management: Puppet, Helm, Ansible, CloudFormation

Basic Qualifications:

• Bachelor’s degree in a scientific field and a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience. An equivalent combination of education and experience will be considered.
• Experience with Kubernetes & CNCF ecosystem: Custom Operators, Service Mesh, k8s architecture concepts – e.g. cluster lifecycle
• Operating Systems: Alpine, RHEL, SLES – general familiarity with Linux sysadmin activities and concepts
• Production experience in at least one compiled language
• Experience with building CI/CD pipelines in at least one build system
• The ability to obtain and maintain a federal public trust clearance from the U.S. government is required. This requires US Citizenship.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong working knowledge of Linux systems fundamentals
• Experience with at least one major cloud
• Experience with Kubernetes Cluster API (CAPI)

Benefits

Cadre5 offers excellent pay and benefits, to include full medical, dental, and vision coverage coupled with 401K match, 15 days PTO, and 10 holidays.

Cadre5 is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants, including individuals with disabilities and protected veterans, are encouraged to apply. Cadre5 is an E-Verify Employer.