The Kubernetes Engineer will design, implement, and optimize service‑mesh‑driven microservices platforms using Istio on Amazon EKS and Oracle OKE. This role is ideal for someone who thrives at the intersection of platform engineering, cloud-native networking, and service mesh observability. You’ll be responsible for building resilient, secure, and scalable Kubernetes environments while enabling teams to adopt modern traffic management and zero‑trust patterns.
🛠️ Key Responsibilities
Kubernetes Platform Engineering
- Deploy, manage, and scale Kubernetes clusters on AWS EKS and Oracle OKE.
- Implement cluster lifecycle automation using Terraform, Helm, GitLab (ArgoCD/Flux), or similar tooling.
- Optimize cluster performance, autoscaling, node pools, and workload scheduling.
Istio Service Mesh Architecture
- Design and implement Istio service mesh across multi‑cluster and multi‑cloud environments.
- Configure traffic management features:
- Canary releases
- Blue/green deployments
- Traffic splitting
- Fault injection
- Circuit breaking
- Implement mTLS, zero‑trust networking, and policy enforcement.
- Manage Istio ingress/egress gateways and Envoy proxy configurations.
Cloud-Native Networking & Security
- Implement network policies, service discovery, and secure communication patterns.
- Integrate Istio with identity providers (OIDC, OAuth2, SPIFFE/SPIRE).
- Work with AWS and OCI networking components (VPC, subnets, load balancers, security lists, NSGs).
Observability & Reliability
- Build end‑to‑end observability using:
- Prometheus
- Grafana
- Kiali
- Jaeger/Zipkin
- CloudWatch / OCI Monitoring
- Troubleshoot mesh‑level issues such as latency, routing failures, and sidecar performance.
- Implement SLOs, SLIs, and error budgets.
Automation & DevOps Integration
- Integrate Istio and Kubernetes with CI/CD pipelines.
- Automate mesh configuration and cluster operations using scripting (Python, Bash, Go).
- Support platform self‑service capabilities for development teams.
📚 Required Skills & Qualifications
- 4–8 years of experience in Kubernetes platform engineering.
- Hands‑on experience with Istio in production environments.
- Strong knowledge of EKS and OKE cluster architecture and operations.
- Deep understanding of Envoy proxy behavior and service mesh patterns.
- Proficiency with Terraform, Helm, GitOps tools, and YAML‑based configuration management.
- Strong understanding of cloud networking (VPC, CNI plugins, ingress/egress, load balancers).
- Experience with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Kiali, Jaeger).
- Solid scripting skills (Python, Bash, or Go).
🎯 Preferred Qualifications
- Experience with multi‑cluster or multi‑mesh deployments.
- Knowledge of AWS App Mesh or OCI Service Mesh (nice to have).
- Familiarity with SPIFFE/SPIRE identity frameworks.
- Experience with container security tools (Falco, Trivy, Aqua, Prisma).
- Certifications such as:
- CKA / CKAD / CKS
- AWS Solutions Architect / DevOps Engineer
- OCI Architect