Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Engineer

RTX; United States; Remote; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

RTX Enterprise Services is seeking an experienced AKS Engineer to design, implement, and support containerized platforms in the Azure cloud. The role emphasizes scalable, secure Kubernetes solutions with CI/CD automation and IaC tooling.

The candidate will collaborate with architects and application teams, maintain runbooks and architecture patterns, and participate in on‑call rotations to ensure reliability and governance across Kubernetes environments.

Qualifications

• Minimum 8 years of relevant experience or 5+ years with advanced degree.
• 5+ years of cloud platforms experience with Azure and AKS.
• Hands-on experience with Terraform or Bicep for IaC.
• Experience with CI/CD and GitOps tooling (Flux, ArgoCD).
• Strong Linux and Windows Server administration and diagnostics.

Responsibilities

• Design, implement, and support AKS clusters per enterprise standards.
• Manage cluster lifecycle: upgrades, scaling, node mgmt, workload integration.
• Build and optimize CI/CD pipelines for containerized workloads.
• Develop Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, and IaC (Terraform/Bicep).
• Enforce AKS security controls: RBAC, Azure AD, image scanning, secrets.
• Monitor with Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Prometheus/Grafana; address issues.
• Collaborate with application teams to support scalable microservices.
• Maintain docs, runbooks, and architecture patterns; participate in on-call.
• Support governance, compliance, and audit requirements for Kubernetes.

Skills

Cloud platforms experience

AKS administration

CI/CD pipelines

IaC and GitOps

Linux/Windows server administration

Education

University degree or equivalent experience

Advanced degree in related field

Tools

Terraform

Bicep

GitHub Actions

Azure DevOps

Flux

ArgoCD

Docker

Kubernetes

Helm

Job description

Location: US-CO-REMOTE

Position Role Type: Remote

U.S. Citizen, U.S. Person, or Immigration Status Requirements: Must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the company's immigration sponsorship now or in the future. The company will not offer immigration sponsorship for this position. The company will not seek an export authorization for this role.

Security Clearance Type: None/Not Required

Security Clearance Status: Not Required

At RTX, the world's largest aerospace and defense company, 185,000 great minds are united by purpose and inspired to make a difference solving the world's most complex problems. With our three market leading businesses, world-class operations and investments in research and development, we offer capabilities and opportunity no one else can. Together, we push the boundaries of known science and find new ways to connect and protect our world. Join us and help shape the future of aerospace and defense.

The following position is to join our RTX Enterprise Services team:

The Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Engineer is responsible for designing, implementing, and supporting containerized application platforms within the enterprise Azure cloud environment. This senior individual contributor role focuses on delivering scalable, reliable, and secure Kubernetes-based solutions. The engineer contributes technical depth, operational reliability, and continuous improvement but does not serve as the team lead.

What You Will Do

• Deploy, configure, and maintain production and non‑production AKS clusters following enterprise standards.
• Manage all cluster lifecycle activities including upgrades, scaling, node management, and workload integrations.
• Build and optimize CI/CD pipelines supporting containerized workloads using Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or similar tools.
• Develop and maintain Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Bicep, ARM).
• Implement and enforce AKS security controls including RBAC, Azure AD integration, image scanning, secrets management, and network security measures.
• Monitor workloads using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Prometheus/Grafana, and other observability tools; proactively address performance and reliability issues.
• Partner with application teams and architects to design and support scalable microservices and containerized solutions.
• Maintain documentation, runbooks, architecture patterns, and operational standards.
• Participate in on‑call rotations and support incident response for AKS and related cloud platform services.
• Support governance, compliance, and audit requirements for Kubernetes environments.

Required Qualifications

• Typically requires: A University Degree or equivalent experience and minimum 8 years prior relevant experience, or An Advanced Degree in a related field and minimum 5 years experience
• 5+ years of experience with cloud platforms; 3+ years hands‑on Azure experience with 2+ years supporting or managing production Kubernetes clusters (AKS preferred).
• Understanding of container architecture, Docker, and orchestration fundamentals with knowledge of Azure networking, security, managed identities, and resource architecture.
• Experience with IaC (Terraform, Bicep) and GitOps approaches (Flux, ArgoCD) with hands‑on experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices.
• Demonstrated deep, hands‑on daily experience administering and troubleshooting both Linux and Windows Server environments, including system configuration, monitoring, patching, and performance optimization and must have diagnostic skills across distributed systems, compute, networking, storage, and application layers.

Preferred Qualifications

• Azure certifications (AZ‑104, AZ‑305, AZ‑400, AZ‑500) or Kubernetes certifications (CKA/CKAD).
• Experience with service mesh architectures (Istio, Linkerd) or ingress controllers.
• Exposure to cost optimization strategies for Kubernetes.
• Understanding of microservices architecture patterns and distributed system design.

What We Offer

Whether you're just starting out on your career journey or are an experienced professional, we offer a robust total rewards package with compensation; healthcare, wellness, retirement and work/life benefits; career development and recognition programs. Some of the benefits we offer include parental (including paternal) leave, flexible work schedules, achievement awards, educational assistance and child/adult backup care.