Principal Kubernetes Software Engineer

About the role

VMware by Broadcom’s Kubernetes Distribution team in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is focused on delivering up-to-date and secure Kubernetes and CNCF projects as packages for the vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) and vSphere Supervisor. As a Principal Kubernetes Engineer, you will design and perform business-aligned contributions primarily for releases, security, manageability, scale, and integrations in Kubernetes internals and related CNCF projects.

Responsibilities

• Leverage common patterns to develop fixes and features for Kubernetes and CNCF projects.
• Design customer-oriented and community-aligned features by building consensus through Key Enhancement Proposals (KEPs) or related open-source contribution processes.
• Ensure explicit Kubernetes version and feature compatibility with continual improvements to automation, pipelines, and testing.
• Deliver timely releases that meet SLAs, architecture, security, and compliance requirements.
• Collaborate internally with stakeholders from product, security, infrastructure, and operations teams.
• Develop Kubernetes controllers and patterns, primarily written in Go.
• Contribute code changes to open-source projects and satisfy contribution requirements.
• Work closely with management to understand priorities and advocate for them on the team.
• Define high-level epics, break down work into individual tasks, and lead estimation and scoping.
• Write automated tests to validate and secure critical customer functionalities.
• Mentor junior engineers and provide technical leadership on complex problems.
• Identify key issues, anticipate problems, and proactively improve business processes and policies.
• Take on-call responsibilities to triage, troubleshoot, and mitigate production issues.

Performance Goals (First 6-12 Months)

• First six months: Establish yourself as an internal expert in VKS and Kubernetes Distributions architecture, gain production experience with deploying additional packages, demonstrate in-depth understanding of Kubernetes extensibility and reconciliation logic, and champion technologies that boost project speed and automation.
• After six months: Align future customer needs with community interests, become a recognized technical and community leader across projects, design and gain approval for a Kubernetes KEP, make consistent upstream contributions, deliver new CNCF software components or features for VCF, lead developer efficiency efforts, and mentor engineers to become influential voices in the department.

Requirements

• Kubernetes expertise and material engineering contribution to at least one CNCF project and various OSS projects.
• Experience with one or more cloud platform architectures.
• History of leading system software projects/teams.
• Good knowledge of distributed systems, databases, algorithms, and data structures.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Bachelor’s degree plus 12+ years of related experience or Master’s degree plus 10+ years of related experience.

Nice to haves

• vSphere experience.
• Extensive knowledge and experience delivering complex container, kernel, packaging, and operating system functionality.
• Operational knowledge of Kubernetes in production environments.
• Material contribution to 2+ CNCF projects or Kubernetes SIG projects (e.g., Kubernetes, Cluster API, ContainerD/RunC, Cluster Autoscaler, Metrics Server, ArgoCD, Certmanager, Flux, Gateway API, Etcd, Harbor, Helm, Istio, Jaeger, KEDA, Kubeadm, Kubeflow, Kube-vip, Kyverno, OPA/Gatekeeper, Opentelemetry).

Location

This role is based in Palo Alto, CA, USA. Candidates must have legal authorization to work in the U.S.

Benefits

• Competitive annual base salary and discretionary annual bonus.
• New hire equity grant and annual equity awards.
• Comprehensive benefits package including medical, dental, and vision plans.
• 401(K) participation with company matching.
• Employee Stock Purchase Program (ESPP).
• Employee Assistance Program (EAP).
• Paid holidays, sick leave, and vacation time.
• Paid Family Leave and other leaves of absence in compliance with applicable laws.