Platform Administrator - Kubernetes (Remote)

The Argonne Leadership Computing Facility at Argonne National Lab is seeking a Platform Administrator (Kubernetes) to join the Containerization, Cloud, and Confidential Computing (C4) team within its Operations group. This position will be involved in managing the day-to-day operations of a set of on-premise Kubernetes clusters and work with both internal and external users to deploy applications on these clusters.

The ALCF houses and maintains a collection of the world's fastest supercomputers, as part of its mission to enable large-scale scientific discovery. As part of this mission, the C4 team is tasked with developing and maintaining infrastructure dedicated to hosting persistent services and cloud-like orchestration capabilities, complementing existing HPC infrastructure and comprising part of the broader scientific workflow.

As a Platform Administrator (Kubernetes), you can expect to:

• Participate in the day-to-day administration of a family of on-premise Kubernetes clusters, and the services provisioned on those clusters to support scientific workflows in a production environment.
• Design and implement administration workflows to handle cluster upgrades and maintenance, user application deployment and incident response.
• Work with operations and applications teams at ALCF to integrate this infrastructure into the facility ecosystem.

This position qualifies as "Remote Work" which applies to employees regularly scheduled to work remotely for their entire work schedule.

Position Requirements

Professional Requirements:

• To perform the essential functions of this position, successful applicants must provide proof of U.S. citizenship, which is required to comply with federal regulations and contract
• PT3: Bachelor's degree and 4+ years of experience, or Master's and 2+ years of experience, or equivalent
• Ability to model Argonne's core values of impact, safety, respect, integrity and teamwork

Skill Requirements:

• Experience with Linux containerization technologies and fundamentals:
  • Linux Namespaces/cGroups
  • OCI Image formats and construction
  • Contemporary container runtimes (Docker, Podman, Apptainer, etc.)
• Experience in deploying and administering on-premise Kubernetes clusters (e.g. using vanilla Kubernetes, K3s, Talos Linux, Rancher)
  • In particular, experience with Kubernetes networking -- CNI configuration, network policies, ingress and egress routing and integration with external load balancers
• Experience with GitOps methodologies and declarative infrastructure-as-code technologies, including ArgoCD, kustomize, helm, secrets-management, CI/CD
• Familiarity with cluster security technologies, including network traffic policy, RBAC, admission policies
• Understanding of software engineering/release management protocols, including planned infrastructure maintenance management, upgrade management
• Experience working with other technical teams to achieve common goals, e.g. networking teams for integration into organizational network environments, security teams for compliance, etc.

Preferred Skills:

• Experience with Linux system administration
• Experience with contemporary web applications, deployment and scaling concerns
• Experience working with applications teams (especially science and research teams) to deploy software services to Kubernetes
• Experience in software development against the Kubernetes API, e.g. development of domain operators and CRDs
• Familiarity with HPC systems and software stacks, e.g. Slurm, PBS, Lustre, Spack

Relevant Certifications, preferred, but not required:

• CKA
• CKAD
• CKS

Job Family

Professional Technical (PT)

Job Profile

IT Multi-Functional 3

Worker Type

Regular

Time Type

Full time

The expected hiring range for this position is $83,264.00 - $131,343.03.

Please note that the pay range information is a general guideline only. The pay offered to a selected candidate will be determined based on factors such as, but not limited to, the scope and responsibilities of the position, the qualifications of the selected candidate, business considerations, internal equity, and external market pay for comparable jobs. Additionally, comprehensive benefits are part of the total rewards package.

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As an equal employment opportunity employer, and in accordance with our core values of impact, safety, respect, integrity and teamwork, Argonne National Laboratory is committed to a safe and welcoming workplace that fosters collaborative scientific discovery and innovation. Argonne encourages everyone to apply for employment. Argonne is committed to nondiscrimination and considers all qualified applicants for employment without regard to any characteristic protected by law.