Senior GCP DevOps Engineer

Sorice Solutions; United States; Remote; USD 150,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Sorice Solutions seeks a seasoned DevOps/Platform Engineer to own the production Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) architecture and lifecycle. You will lead upgrades, migrations, and capacity planning, while collaborating with application teams to ensure disruption-tolerant workloads.

Responsibilities include driving high-availability patterns, vulnerability remediation, and robust observability using Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, and Kubernetes metrics.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent practical experience.
• 6+ years of DevOps, SRE, Platform Engineering, or Cloud Infrastructure experience with hands-on ownership of production systems.
• Deep Google Cloud and production GKE experience; strong GKE depth required.

Responsibilities

• Own production GKE architecture and lifecycle including clusters, node pools, autoscaling, storage, networking, and upgrades.
• Design and execute low- or zero-downtime GKE upgrades and node migrations using surge/blue-green strategies, probes, and safe rollback plans.
• Optimize infrastructure via machine-family selection, sizing, topology, and cost analysis.
• Design high-availability and disaster-recovery across zones/regions with backup/restore and RTO/RPO planning.
• Partner with application teams to ensure workloads are disruption-tolerant via replica design and safe rolling deployments.
• Lead DevOps and vulnerability remediation across containers, OS, libraries, and platform components with secure practices.
• Own observability and incident response using Prometheus, Grafana, ELK, and Kubernetes metrics; drive RCA and post-incident fixes.
• Operate production Kafka platforms including tuning, quotas, lag, and recovery testing.
• Support stateful services like MongoDB, Redis, Elasticsearch, including backup lifecycle and upgrades.
• Build and improve GitLab CI/CD pipelines, Docker images, Kubernetes manifests, and automation scripts.

Skills

GCP/GKE depth

Kubernetes administration

Python/Bash automation

Terraform

GitLab CI/CD

Docker

Prometheus/Grafana/ELK

Kafka

Linux networking

Crew leadership/mentoring

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/IT/Engineering or equivalent

Tools

GitLab CI/CD

Docker

Terraform

Kubernetes

Job description

Role & responsibilities

• Own production GKE architecture and lifecycle: clusters, node pools, autoscaling, storage, networking, add-ons, Kubernetes version upgrades, and worker-node patching.
• Design and execute low- or zero-downtime GKE upgrades and node migrations using surge/blue-green strategies, PodDisruptionBudgets, probes, graceful termination, safe drain/cordon practices, rollback plans, and verified capacity headroom.
• Optimize infrastructure through machine-family selection and migrations , node sizing and topology, requests/limits, bin packing, Cluster Autoscaler/HPA/KEDA tuning, quota/reservation planning, and cost analysis.
• Design high-availability and disaster-recovery patterns across zones and regions, including regional/multi-zone GKE, multi-region failover options, backup/restore strategy, recovery testing, and RTO/RPO planning.
• Partner with application teams to make workloads disruption-tolerant through replica design, readiness/startup behavior, preStop and termination handling, StatefulSet/storage considerations, dependency management, and safe rolling deployment patterns.
• Lead DevOps and vulnerability remediation across container images, OS packages, application libraries, and platform components using secure base images, checks, registry scanning, patching, IAM/RBAC, secrets, certificates, and TLS controls.
• Own observability and incident response using Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, ELK/Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, and Kubernetes metrics; build actionable alerts, reduce noise, lead RCA, and drive post-incident fixes.
• Operate production Kafka platforms, including broker resiliency, rolling restarts, producer/consumer behavior, quotas/rate limits, consumer lag, JMX monitoring, storage capacity, KEDA scaling, and failure-recovery testing.
• Support stateful platform services such as MongoDB, Solr, Redis, and Elasticsearch, including backup lifecycle, restore validation, replication, capacity planning, and version/upgrade compatibility.
• Build and improve GitLab CI/CD pipelines, Docker images, Kubernetes manifests, Python/Bash automation, Terraform-based infrastructure, and Helm/Kustomize packaging so changes are repeatable, reviewed, and auditable.
• Troubleshoot Linux, GKE, networking, DNS, load balancing/Ingress, certificates, VPN/private connectivity, service accounts, storage, and application-to-platform integration issues across environments.
• Own infrastructure-impacting production changes from risk assessment and runbook preparation through validation and stakeholder communication; translate client/business requirements into practical platform solutions and explain trade-offs clearly.
• Mentor junior engineers, review infrastructure and automation changes, strengthen engineering standards and documentation, and provide technical direction across the DevOps team.

Preferred candidate profile

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience.
• 6+ years of DevOps, SRE, Platform Engineering, or Cloud Infrastructure experience with hands-on ownership of production systems.
• Deep Google Cloud and production GKE experience. This is a GCP/GKE-focused role; EKS/AKS experience without strong GKE depth is not sufficient.
• Advanced Kubernetes administration: node pools, scheduling, autoscaling, PDBs, probes, pod lifecycle, Deployments/StatefulSets, storage/PVCs, RBAC, networking, cordon/drain behavior, upgrades, and API deprecations.
• Proven experience executing GKE upgrades, node/machine-family migrations, patching, and maintenance with minimal application disruption.
• Strong GCP infrastructure knowledge across Compute Engine, VPC, load balancing, IAM/service accounts, DNS, certificates, Artifact Registry, quotas/reservations, and monitoring/logging.
• Strong Linux and networking fundamentals, including TCP/IP, DNS, TLS, routing, firewalls, and load balancing.
• Hands-on Python/Bash automation, Git, GitLab CI/CD, Docker, Terraform, and Kubernetes deployment/configuration practices.
• Hands-on Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, and ELK experience for production monitoring and troubleshooting.
• Production Kafka experience and a strong understanding of distributed-system reliability, backpressure, consumer lag, capacity, and recovery behavior.
• Experience with vulnerability remediation, dependency/image scanning, secure access/secrets practices, and patch management.
• Experience with backup/restore, disaster recovery, capacity planning, and troubleshooting across application, Kubernetes, network, and data-service layers.
• Excellent communication and technical leadership: able to work with application/product teams and client-facing stakeholders, lead incidents and technical discussions, mentor engineers, and make sound risk-based decisions.