Lead Kubernetes Engineer
Job Summary:
The University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health (SMPH), Department of Information Technology, is seeking a Kubernetes Engineer to architect and operate the container orchestration platform underpinning a wide range of strategic SMPH initiatives.
This role will design Kubernetes clusters supporting use cases that include web application hosting, the SMPH research analytics platform, LLMs-as-a-service, and AI-specific orchestration components. The Kubernetes Engineer will work closely with security, infrastructure, research computing, and application teams to ensure clusters meet HIPAA, NIST 800-53, and NIST 800-171 control requirements while delivering a developer-friendly platform that accelerates delivery of new services.
This position may require some work to be performed in-person, onsite, at a designated campus work location. Some work may be performed remotely, at an offsite, non-campus work location.
Key Job Responsibilities:
- Manages, maintains, selects, and develops automation tools and infrastructure, including security configurations
- Performs integration, migration, configuration, and security of existing applications and services into automated infrastructures
- Serves as a subject matter expert to internal stakeholders, providing guidance and training to staff
- Serves as technical lead for one or more aspects of the system
- Analyzes requirements and communicates and coordinates with staff and internal stakeholders related to the system and/or project
- Develops, programs, and/or deploys automation workflows for deployment, configuration, and/or monitoring of systems/services
Required Qualifications:
- At least three (3) years of hands-on production experience designing, operating, and securing Kubernetes clusters
- Demonstrated experience with Ansible for configuration management and automation
- Demonstrated cybersecurity experience, including applying security controls to platform infrastructure
Preferred Qualifications:
- Kubernetes-related certification (e.g., CKA, CKAD, CKS)
- Cybersecurity certification (e.g., CISSP, Security+, GIAC certifications)
- Contributions to open-source cloud-native community projects (CNCF or related)
- Experience with Terraform and infrastructure-as-code in a regulated environment (HIPAA, NIST 800-53, NIST 800-171)
- Experience with Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) or other managed Kubernetes platforms
- Experience supporting research computing, AI/ML workloads, or LLM-serving infrastructure
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