Senior Cloud Architect: Kubernetes & Multi‑Enclave Platform

United Launch Alliance (ULA); Centennial (CO); On-site; USD 158,000 - 264,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

401(k) match

Discretionary annual incentive bonus

Generous paid time off

Flexible work environments

Job summary

United Launch Alliance (ULA) in Denver seeks a Cloud Architect 5 to serve as the senior technical authority for Kubernetes platform engineering, multi-enclave cloud operations, and mission-critical workload integration.

You will define enterprise architecture standards, drive reliability and security across clusters, and mentor CloudOps engineers while partnering with mission program teams and engineers across the company.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a STEM field from an accredited college or university.
• 8+ years of cloud engineering or infrastructure experience, including hands-on production Kubernetes administration.
• Deep expertise with EKS or equivalent managed Kubernetes platforms.
• Strong proficiency in cloud networking, service mesh concepts, and core Kubernetes networking models.
• Demonstrated experience implementing security controls such as RBAC, OPA/Gatekeeper, pod security standards, and secrets-management systems.
• Hands-on experience with CSI drivers, persistent storage architectures, and backup/restore design.
• Proficiency with observability stacks including Prometheus, Grafana, and distributed tracing.
• Proven ability to lead incident response, diagnose complex cluster issues, and ensure reliability in mission-critical environments.
• Strong communication skills and ability to coach and mentor junior and mid-level engineers.

Responsibilities

• Govern and maintain Kubernetes clusters across engineering workloads.
• Design cluster topology: nodes, autoscaling, taints, tolerations, and affinity.
• Own cross-cluster networking and service mesh architecture (Ingress, load balancers, CNI).
• Define and enforce Kubernetes security posture: RBAC, OPA/Gatekeeper, pod security standards, secrets management.
• Architect and manage storage strategies with CSI drivers, EBS/EFS provisioning, backups.
• Drive observability practices using Prometheus, Grafana, and distributed tracing systems.
• Lead incident response and reliability engineering for EKS clusters and migrations.
• Coach CloudOps team members to strengthen cluster operations, readiness, automation, and troubleshooting.
• Integrate Kubernetes platforms with mission program workflows and toolchains.

Skills

Kubernetes

EKS

Cloud networking

RBAC

OPA/Gatekeeper

CSI drivers

Prometheus

Grafana

Incident response

Leadership

Education

Bachelor's degree in STEM

Tools

AWS

Terraform

Helm

Ansible

Python

ArgoCD

Flux

Job description

United Launch Alliance (ULA) in Denver seeks a Cloud Architect 5 to serve as the senior technical authority for Kubernetes platform engineering, multi-enclave cloud operations, and mission-critical workload integration.

You will define enterprise architecture standards, drive reliability and security across clusters, and mentor CloudOps engineers while partnering with mission program teams and engineers across the company.