AI-First Platform Engineer – Cloud & Edge (Kubernetes)

NALEJ; Arlington (VA); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

NALEJ is building a production-grade, multi-cluster Kubernetes platform powering multiple tenants in Ballston, VA. The platform team designs and develops from Pulumi infrastructure, through EKS clusters, Istio service mesh, and GitOps delivery to the Next.js apps tenants use daily.

Ideal candidates are generalist Platform Engineers who can write a Pulumi stack, debug Istio routing, and tighten policy controls.

Qualifications

• Infrastructure as code with Pulumi in AWS accounts required.
• Experience operating multi-cluster EKS environments and Istio routing.
• Strong GitOps and CI/CD practices using GitLab/ArgoCD.
• Can manage canaries with Argo Rollouts and observability stack.
• Knowledge of policy engines and security controls (Kyverno, mTLS).
• Identity management with OIDC/JWT and IdP integrations.
• AI-assisted workflows and internal tooling are a plus.

Responsibilities

• Develop and own end-to-end platform blueprints for cloud/edge platforms.
• Drive platform initiatives aligned with business goals.
• Serve as SME across cloud, open-source tools, edge tech, and IaC.
• Collaborate with product managers, engineers, DevOps, and stakeholders.
• Oversee technical timelines, dependencies and deliverables for platform projects.
• Maintain architectural docs, design patterns and standards.

Skills

Infrastructure design

Kubernetes operations

Cloud platforms

Security & policy

Auth & identity

CI/CD & GitOps

Platform collaboration

AI tooling familiarity

Observability

Delivery mindset

Education

Bachelor's or Master’s in CS/Engineering

Tools

Pulumi IaC

EKS Kubernetes

Istio service mesh

GitLab CI / ArgoCD

Argo Rollouts

Prometheus/Grafana/Loki/Thanos/Kiali

Kyverno, mTLS, cert-manager

OIDC/JWT IdP integration

Python CLI / AI tooling

Job description

NALEJ is building a production-grade, multi-cluster Kubernetes platform powering multiple tenants in Ballston, VA. The platform team designs and develops from Pulumi infrastructure, through EKS clusters, Istio service mesh, and GitOps delivery to the Next.js apps tenants use daily.

Ideal candidates are generalist Platform Engineers who can write a Pulumi stack, debug Istio routing, and tighten policy controls.