Senior Kubernetes Engineer
Absa
n/a - n/a
15 Troye Street, City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality, 2001
Contract
Role
Professional Summary
Senior Kubernetes Specialist with deep hands-on expertise in building, securing and managing production-grade Kubernetes clusters on bare-metal infrastructure. Experience in the full development lifecycle – bootstrapping VMs, networking, storage, secrets management, observability and cluster BAU tasks.
Strong Linux system background recommended, comfortable in bootstrapping VMs, configuring all Kubernetes related tooling, cluster networking, storage, secrets management, RBAC across multiple team environments, observability and cluster BAU tasks.
Self-motivated and disciplined professional with strong ownership, problem-solving abilities, and a collaborative team-oriented mindset. Known for reliability, adaptability, and continuous learning in fast-paced platform engineering environments. Cloud infrastructure knowledge is a plus.
Core Skills
- Kubernetes (multi-node HA, bare-metal and production grade clusters)
- K8s Security (RBAC, OIDC, Certificate management, Networking, CyberArk Conjur, K8s secrets)
- K8s Container Network Interface (CNI) knowledge (Calico, Cilium, network policies etc.)
- Linux (Ubuntu / RHEL)
- CI/CD
- IAM and RBAC
- Terraform
- Ansible
- SQL / Presto
- Hive Metastore
- Apache Iceberg
- Helm
- Git
- Monitoring & Troubleshooting
Responsibilities
- Design, build and maintain production level Kubernetes clusters on bare-metal servers.
- Ensuring clusters being built are done so with a security first mindset.
- Configure multi-control-plane High Availability clusters
- Manage node lifecycles
- Manage K8s cluster health
- Supported existing AWS cloud infrastructure and container platform environments.
- Worked with containerized applications and distributed data platforms.
- Automated infrastructure provisioning using Terraform and Ansible.
- Supported SQL-based distributed query platforms and analytics workloads.
- Worked on Hive Metastore configurations and access control integrations.
- Managed container deployments, scaling, and operational monitoring.
- Supported CI/CD deployment processes and environment automation.
- Collaborated with engineering and platform teams on infrastructure improvements.
Recommended Certifications
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
- Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS)
- Bonus certifications
o AWS Solutions Architect - Associate
o AWS Certified Data Engineer – Associate
o AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer - Associate
o AWS Solutions Architect - Professional
Professional Traits
- Strong ownership mentality and accountability.
- Disciplined, reliable, and highly committed to delivering quality work.
- Security-first mindset applied at every layer.
- Strong written communication – able to document architecture, runbook and any incident reports clearly
- Strong team player with excellent collaboration and communication skills.
- Quick learner with the ability to adapt to new technologies and environments.
- Proactive approach to troubleshooting and problem-solving.
- Able to work independently as well as in cross-functional teams.
- Focused on continuous improvement, automation, and operational excellence.
- Strong analytical and platform support mindset.
Technical Environment
Kubernetes, Bare-metal, Linux, Calico, MetalLB, Nginx, Longhorn, Trino / Starburst, Apache Ranger, Hive, Iceberg, Terraform, AWS, Automation scripting, GitHub
Nice to have
- Experience with Ranger or other cluster management tools
- Familiarity with Trino Starburst
- Experience with Dell ECS and on-prem object stores
- AWS EKS experience
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