Senior Kubernetes Engineer

Infinitive; McLean (VA); On-site; USD 120,000 - 150,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading data and AI consultancy is seeking a Senior Kubernetes Engineer to design and maintain secure, enterprise-grade Kubernetes environments for banking applications. The ideal candidate will have extensive Kubernetes experience in complex enterprises and knowledge of security practices relevant to financial services. Responsibilities include architecture design, automation of environments, and ensuring compliance with industry standards. Strong collaboration and documentation skills are also essential for this role.

Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on experience designing and operating Kubernetes in large, complex enterprises.
• Deep knowledge of Kubernetes primitives and container security.
• Proven experience building fully automated, script-driven environments.

Responsibilities

• Design a Kubernetes-based architecture for a banking application.
• Model core banking workloads as containerized workloads.
• Implement security best practices suitable for financial institutions.

Skills

Kubernetes

Infrastructure-as-code

GitOps

Container security

Networking

Job description

Join to apply for the Senior Kubernetes Engineer role at Infinitive.

About Infinitive

Infinitive is a data and AI consultancy that enables its clients to modernize, monetize and operationalize their data to create lasting and substantial value. We possess deep industry and technology expertise to drive and sustain adoption of new capabilities. We match our people and personalities to our clients' culture while bringing the right mix of talent and skills to enable high return on investment.

Infinitive has been named “Best Small Firms to Work For” by Consulting Magazine 8 times, most recently in 2025. Infinitive has also been named a Washington Post “Top Workplace”, Washington Business Journal “Best Places to Work”, and Virginia Business “Best Places to Work.”

Role Summary

The Senior Kubernetes Engineer is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining a fully isolated, enterprise-grade Kubernetes environment that replicates a top 5 US bank’s application and infrastructure landscape. The environment must be configurable and deployable end-to-end via scripts, with no external runtime dependencies, to support secure scenario execution, testing, and experimentation across multiple systems and services.

Key Responsibilities

Architecture & Design

• Design a Kubernetes-based reference architecture that mirrors the bank’s multi-tier, microservices, data, and network topology in a fully isolated environment
• Define patterns for stateless and stateful workloads, storage, networking, and security that align with banking-grade resilience, performance, and compliance expectations
• Establish a single-command or fully scripted bootstrap process for cluster creation, configuration, and teardown (e.g., using Helm, Kustomize, Terraform/infra-as-code, and Kubernetes manifests)

Environment Replication & Isolation

• Model core banking, payments, digital channels, and integration layers as containerized workloads, including supporting services (databases, message queues, APIs, batch jobs)
• Implement strict network segmentation, zero-trust policies, and namespace/tenant isolation to emulate production controls while ensuring complete separation from live systems and data
• Create synthetic data generation and masking strategies so scenarios can run with realistic but non-production data

Automation & Script-Driven Operations

• Build fully automated scripts/pipelines for:
  • Provisioning Kubernetes clusters and underlying infrastructure
  • Deploying all application components, dependencies, and configuration from source control
  • Executing and resetting scenarios, test suites, and performance runs
• Ensure the entire environment (infrastructure + apps + config) is reproducible from code with no interactive/manual steps

Security, Compliance & Governance

• Implement security best practices for secrets management, RBAC, admission controls, policy-as-code, and audit logging suitable for highly regulated financial institutions
• Integrate compliance checks (e.g., image scanning, configuration policies, vulnerability scanning) into the environment build and deployment scripts
• Work closely with security, risk, and compliance teams to align the replicated environment with relevant standards and internal controls

Performance, Reliability & Observability

• Define and tune resource requests/limits, autoscaling policies, and resilience patterns (readiness/liveness probes, pod disruption budgets, etc.)
• Implement full observability (metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, and alerts) to monitor scenarios and environment health
• Conduct benchmarking and capacity planning to ensure the environment can support realistic load and stress scenarios

Collaboration & Documentation

• Partner with application teams, platform engineering, and architecture to understand production designs and translate them into the replicated environment
• Document the target architecture, deployment runbooks, configuration standards, and scenario execution guides for technical and non-technical stakeholders
• Provide knowledge transfer and training to internal teams on maintaining and extending the replicated environment

Required Qualifications

• Extensive hands‑on experience designing and operating Kubernetes in large, complex enterprises (financial services experience strongly preferred)
• Deep knowledge of:
  • Kubernetes primitives (Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Services, Ingress, NetworkPolicies)
  • Infrastructure‑as‑code and GitOps practices
  • Container security and secrets management
• Proven experience building fully automated, script‑driven environments with minimal or no manual steps
• Strong understanding of enterprise networking, security controls, and isolation patterns (e.g., service mesh, zero‑trust, multi‑tenancy)
• Familiarity with regulated industry requirements (e.g., banking/financial services security and compliance expectations)

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience replicating or modeling production‑like environments for testing, DR, or sandbox purposes in a bank or large financial institution
• Background in CI/CD, test automation, and performance testing within containerised environments
• Experience interfacing with risk, audit, and compliance stakeholders to design defensible technical controls