Kubernetes - Cloud Engineer

About the Role

Charles River Development is looking for an experienced Cloud Native Platform Engineer. The successful candidate will be responsible for automating and streamlining our operations and processes, building and maintaining tools for deployment, monitoring, and operations, as well as troubleshooting and resolving issues in our development, test, and production environments.

Responsibilities

• Azure Kubernetes Platform Strategy:
  • Design, build, and operate enterprise-grade Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) platforms supporting mission-critical workloads.
  • Manage multi-cluster and multi-region AKS deployments with high availability and disaster recovery strategies.
  • Own platform lifecycle management including version upgrades, patching, node pool management, and cluster hardening.
  • Define and enforce standardized AKS architecture patterns across environments (dev, non-prod, prod).
• Cloud-Native Infrastructure & Workload Enablement:
  • Partner with application teams to onboard and modernize workloads into containerized, cloud-native architectures.
  • Enable scalable, resilient deployments using microservices, API-first, and event-driven patterns.
  • Support integration across enterprise systems (including hybrid/on-prem connectivity where required).
• Automation, GitOps & Deployment Engineering:
  • Implement GitOps-based deployment models using tools like ArgoCD for consistent and auditable releases.
  • Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines on Azure DevOps / GitHub Actions for Kubernetes workloads.
  • Develop Infrastructure as Code solutions using Terraform (preferred) for Azure resources and AKS provisioning.
  • Automate operational workflows including cluster provisioning, scaling, and recovery.
• Observability, Monitoring & Reliability Engineering:
  • Design and maintain platform observability frameworks using Prometheus, Grafana, Dynatrace, Elasticsearch, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and OpenTelemetry.
  • Ensure proactive monitoring of cluster health, application performance, and infrastructure metrics.
  • Drive incident management practices, root cause analysis (RCA), and continuous reliability improvements.
  • Define and enforce SLOs, SLIs, and platform health KPIs.
• Security, Networking & Compliance (Azure-focused):
  • Implement secure AKS architectures including Azure CNI / networking models, private clusters, network policies, and identity management (Managed Identity, Azure AD integration).
  • Enforce container security and runtime protection (image scanning, policy enforcement).
  • Integrate with Azure Key Vault for secrets management.
  • Ensure compliance with enterprise security and governance standards.
• Cross‑Functional Leadership:
  • Lead complex troubleshooting across Kubernetes, Azure infrastructure, and network layers.
  • Drive cost optimization and capacity management (FinOps practices) for AKS and Azure resources.
  • Serve as a bridge between Cloud Platform Engineering, Product, Architecture, and Business teams.
  • Provide thought leadership on cloud native platforms, operating models, and platform governance.

Qualifications

• Minimum 10 years of experience in cloud engineering organization, with platform engineering experience, or solution architecture roles.
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or related field.
• Extensive experience with Kubernetes, containers, and distributed systems.
• Strong expertise in Azure (AKS), with exposure to multi-cloud (AWS/GCP) and cloud-native architectures.
• Hands-on experience with DevOps Platform Tooling (ArgoCD, Terraform, Azure DevOps, scripting).
• Operational experience with observability tools (Dynatrace, Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry).
• Experience influencing or owning platform/product roadmaps in partnership with Product Management.
• Solid background in cloud native engineering concepts, performance optimization, security, and governance.

Skills

• Strong communication and presentation skills, with the ability to influence senior leadership and client levels.

Pay

Salary Range: $90,000 - $157,500 Annual

The range quoted above applies to the role in the primary location specified. If the candidate would ultimately work outside of the primary location, the applicable range could differ.

Benefits

• Retirement savings plan (401K) with company match.
• Insurance coverage including basic life, medical, dental, vision, long-term disability, and other optional additional coverages.
• Paid-time off including vacation, sick leave, short term disability, and family care responsibilities.
• Access to Employee Assistance Program.
• Incentive compensation including eligibility for annual performance-based awards.
• Eligibility for certain tax-advantaged savings plans.