Senior Platform Engineer – On-Prem K8s (Air-Gapped TS/SCI)

North Point Technology; Chantilly (VA); On-site; USD 165,000 - 262,000; Full time

Job summary

North Point Technology in Chantilly, VA seeks a Senior Platform Engineer to design, deploy, and maintain air-gapped on-prem Kubernetes clusters. This short-term contract (~7 months) requires Top Secret/SCI eligibility and willingness to obtain a polygraph. You'll own the full stack, from Linux tuning to storage and CI/CD in a secure environment.

Experience with kubeadm/Kubespray, ArgoCD, Kaniko, and strong scripting skills are essential for success.

Qualifications

• Active Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility.
• Bachelor’s degree in STEM; Master’s preferred.
• CKS certification or equivalent Kubernetes security expertise.
• Experience with air-gapped, non-cloud Kubernetes environments.
• Willingness to obtain CI polygraph.

Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, and maintain enterprise-scale Kubernetes clusters in air-gapped data centers.
• Perform Linux administration including systemd, kernel tuning, and SSH key architecture.
• Install and configure container runtimes: containerd, CRI‑O.
• Hardening: AppArmor and SELinux; manage RBAC, network policies, auditing.
• Implement CSI storage and dynamic provisioning; manage etcd backups and restore.
• Bootstrap multi-master Kubernetes clusters using kubeadm or Kubespray.
• Develop Ansible playbooks and GitOps workflows with ArgoCD.
• Create CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure testing and validation.
• Debug cluster components using k9s, kubectl, crictl.

Skills

On-prem Kubernetes

Linux administration

containerd/CRI-O

cgroups v2/namespaces

AppArmor/SELinux

CSI storage/dynamic provisioning

HA control plane

etcd ops

RBAC/network policies

Certificate management

Ansible automation

GitOps/ArgoCD

CI/CD pipelines

Kaniko builds

k9s/kubectl/crictl

Bash/Python scripting

Education

Bachelor's degree in STEM

Master's degree in STEM (preferred)

CKS certification

Active Top Secret clearance

SCI eligibility

Willingness to obtain CI polygraph

Tools

Kubeadm

Kubespray

ArgoCD

Kaniko

Job description

North Point Technology in Chantilly, VA seeks a Senior Platform Engineer to design, deploy, and maintain air-gapped on-prem Kubernetes clusters. This short-term contract (~7 months) requires Top Secret/SCI eligibility and willingness to obtain a polygraph. You'll own the full stack, from Linux tuning to storage and CI/CD in a secure environment.

Experience with kubeadm/Kubespray, ArgoCD, Kaniko, and strong scripting skills are essential for success.