Field Cloud Engineer: Kubernetes, DoD-Sec, Customer-Facing

Ultimate Knowledge Institute; Columbia (MD); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical, dental, vision

Disability insurance

Life insurance

Supplemental life insurance

401(k) match

PTO 15 days

Company holidays

Job summary

Ultimate Knowledge Institute seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer who writes code, reasons about distributed systems, and helps customers succeed in cloud-native environments. You will ship tooling, debug complex issues, and promote GitOps and IaC practices.

Kubernetes experience is mandatory, and DoD security requirements apply. The role is hybrid with Orlando, Florida as a primary location; some travel to Orlando for planning and customer engagements is expected.

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience (backend or platform-focused).
• Proficiency in at least one modern backend language (TypeScript, Java, Go, Python).
• Hands-on experience deploying and operating Kubernetes workloads in production.
• Practical experience with GitOps tooling (ArgoCD preferred; Flux acceptable).
• Experience building infrastructure‑as‑code using Terraform, Helm, and/or Kustomize.
• Ability to troubleshoot distributed systems (container runtimes, API failures, microservices).
• Familiarity with CNI plugins (Calico, Cilium, Multus).
• Strong networking fundamentals (DNS, TCP/IP, firewalls, proxies).
• Experience with AWS and GovCloud is a plus.
• Automation and tooling in Bash, Shell, Python.

Responsibilities

• Ship code, build tooling, and write automation for distributed systems.
• Debug real distributed‑systems failures and improve reliability.
• Help customers adopt GitOps, IaC practices, and best-practice architectures.
• Collaborate with customer engineering and IT/SecOps teams in hybrid cloud environments.
• Travel to Orlando, FL for engagements and on-site support when required.

Skills

Kubernetes

TypeScript

Java

Go

Python

GitOps

ArgoCD

Flux

Terraform

Helm

Kustomize

Calico

Cilium

Multus

Networking

AWS

Bash

DoD clearance

Tools

ArgoCD

Flux

Terraform

Helm

Kustomize

Job description

Ultimate Knowledge Institute seeks a Forward Deployed Engineer who writes code, reasons about distributed systems, and helps customers succeed in cloud-native environments. You will ship tooling, debug complex issues, and promote GitOps and IaC practices.

Kubernetes experience is mandatory, and DoD security requirements apply. The role is hybrid with Orlando, Florida as a primary location; some travel to Orlando for planning and customer engagements is expected.