VP – Infrastructure Architect (Kubernetes) - top hedge fund

DB Recruitment; New York (NY); On-site; USD 250,000 - 350,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading global hedge fund in New York is seeking a VP – Infrastructure Architect (Kubernetes) to steer the architecture, design, and evolution of its large-scale container orchestration and cloud-native infrastructure.

The role requires senior technical leadership across on-premises, private cloud and public cloud environments, shaping the Kubernetes ecosystem for scalable, secure and resilient workloads.

Qualifications

• Extensive infrastructure architecture experience in large-scale environments.
• Proven track record designing and scaling production Kubernetes platforms.
• Experience spanning on-premises, private cloud and public cloud.
• Strong Linux systems engineering expertise and automation focus.

Responsibilities

• Own the architecture and technical direction of enterprise Kubernetes infrastructure.
• Design, build and scale large-scale Kubernetes environments for mission-critical workloads.
• Define architectural standards, patterns and best practices for Kubernetes adoption.
• Lead multi-cluster, multi-region strategies with high availability and DR.
• Drive CI/CD, GitOps, and automation across the platform team.
• Mentor engineers and communicate strategy to senior leadership.

Skills

Kubernetes

Terraform

Ansible

Python

Helm

GitOps

Docker

Networking

RBAC

Security

OpenShift

Rancher

Observability

Tools

Argo CD

OpenShift

Rancher

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

Job description

A leading global hedge fund is seeking an accomplished VP – Infrastructure Architect (Kubernetes) to lead the architecture, design and evolution of its large-scale container orchestration and cloud-native infrastructure.

This is a senior technical leadership opportunity within a highly sophisticated technology environment, supporting critical investment platforms, quantitative research, data engineering and enterprise applications.

The successful candidate will be responsible for defining the architectural direction of the firm's Kubernetes ecosystem, ensuring the infrastructure is highly scalable, resilient, secure and capable of supporting demanding workloads across a complex global technology landscape.

Working closely with senior technology leadership, infrastructure engineering, application development and platform teams, this individual will play a pivotal role in shaping the firm's next-generation infrastructure strategy.

Key Responsibilities

Kubernetes Architecture & Strategy

• Own the architecture and technical direction of the firm's enterprise Kubernetes infrastructure.
• Design, build and scale large-scale Kubernetes environments supporting mission-critical applications and computational workloads.
• Define architectural standards, design patterns and best practices for Kubernetes adoption across the organisation.
• Architect highly available, fault-tolerant and geographically distributed Kubernetes environments.
• Lead the evolution of Kubernetes infrastructure across on-premises, private cloud and public cloud environments.
• Evaluate emerging container orchestration technologies and develop long-term infrastructure roadmaps.
• Ensure Kubernetes platforms can support significant growth in application demand, computational workloads and infrastructure complexity.
• Drive the development of enterprise-grade container platforms that enable engineering teams to deploy, operate and scale applications efficiently.
• Architect reusable infrastructure services and self-service platform capabilities.
• Establish standardised approaches to container deployment, configuration management and lifecycle operations.
• Collaborate with platform engineering teams to improve developer experience, infrastructure reliability and deployment efficiency.
• Lead infrastructure modernisation initiatives involving containerisation, microservices and cloud-native architectures.
• Define approaches for multi-cluster management, workload isolation and resource optimisation.

Scalability, Reliability & Performance

• Design Kubernetes infrastructure capable of supporting large-scale, high-throughput and business-critical workloads.
• Architect solutions for cluster scalability, workload scheduling, resource allocation and capacity management.
• Establish high-availability, disaster recovery and business continuity architecture.
• Identify and resolve architectural bottlenecks affecting application performance and infrastructure efficiency.
• Define standards for Kubernetes networking, ingress, service discovery and storage integration.
• Ensure infrastructure can meet demanding availability, performance and operational requirements.

Infrastructure Automation & DevOps

• Define infrastructure automation strategies using Infrastructure as Code and GitOps principles.
• Drive automated Kubernetes provisioning, deployment, configuration and lifecycle management.
• Establish architectural standards for technologies including Terraform, Ansible, Helm, Argo CD and related platforms.
• Collaborate with DevOps and SRE teams to implement effective CI/CD and infrastructure delivery practices.
• Promote automated testing, observability and operational resilience across Kubernetes environments.
• Improve platform efficiency through automation and engineering best practices.

Security, Governance & Operational Resilience

• Define secure Kubernetes architecture incorporating identity management, RBAC, network policies and secrets management.
• Establish container security standards across infrastructure and application environments.
• Ensure platform architecture supports appropriate security, compliance and governance requirements.
• Architect monitoring, logging, alerting and observability capabilities.
• Work closely with cybersecurity teams to embed security controls into Kubernetes platform design.
• Develop standards for cluster upgrades, patching, configuration management and vulnerability remediation.

Technical Leadership & Stakeholder Engagement

• Serve as a senior technical authority for Kubernetes and container infrastructure architecture.
• Partner with infrastructure leadership, software engineering, quantitative technology and cybersecurity teams.
• Translate complex business and technical requirements into scalable infrastructure architecture.
• Lead architectural reviews and influence major infrastructure investment decisions.
• Mentor senior infrastructure engineers and architects, promoting engineering excellence.
• Communicate architectural strategies, technical risks and recommendations to senior technology stakeholders.

Required Experience

• Extensive experience in infrastructure architecture, platform engineering or distributed systems engineering.
• Proven track record designing and scaling large, complex, production Kubernetes environments.
• Deep technical knowledge of Kubernetes architecture, including control plane components, networking, scheduling, storage and cluster lifecycle management.
• Experience architecting Kubernetes platforms across on-premises, private cloud or hybrid cloud environments.
• Strong Linux infrastructure and systems engineering expertise.
• Experience designing highly available, resilient and geographically distributed infrastructure.
• Advanced understanding of container technologies, including Docker/containerd and container networking.
• Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code and automation technologies such as Terraform, Ansible and Python.
• Experience with Helm, GitOps and Kubernetes deployment automation.
• Strong knowledge of Kubernetes networking, including CNI technologies, ingress controllers, load balancing and service connectivity.
• Experience with observability platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry or equivalent technologies.
• Understanding of Kubernetes security, identity management, RBAC and workload isolation.
• Proven ability to influence architecture decisions across large engineering organisations.
• Excellent communication skills and the ability to engage with senior technology leadership

Highly Desirable Experience

• Experience within a leading hedge fund, quantitative trading firm, investment bank or similarly demanding technology organisation.
• Expertise in bare-metal Kubernetes and large-scale on-premises container environments.
• Experience with Kubernetes distributions such as OpenShift, Rancher or managed Kubernetes services.
• Experience with multi-cluster orchestration and management technologies.
• Knowledge of service mesh technologies such as Istio or Linkerd.
• Experience with high-performance networking and storage solutions.
• Experience running GPU-intensive or AI/ML workloads on Kubernetes.
• Familiarity with Kubernetes workload scheduling, resource quotas, autoscaling and advanced cluster optimisation.
• Experience establishing internal developer platforms and self-service infrastructure capabilities.

Ideal Candidate Profile

The ideal candidate will be an experienced Principal Architect, Distinguished Engineer, SVP Infrastructure Architect or senior Platform Engineering Architect with substantial expertise in Kubernetes at enterprise scale.

They will have successfully designed and evolved complex Kubernetes environments supporting hundreds or thousands of applications, containers or compute nodes.

We are particularly interested in candidates who:

• Have personally architected and scaled major Kubernetes platforms.
• Possess deep technical expertise beyond Kubernetes administration and routine cluster operations.
• Understand the challenges of running Kubernetes across complex on-premises and hybrid infrastructure.
• Can make strategic architectural decisions while remaining technically hands-on.
• Have experience operating in environments where performance, availability and reliability are critical.
• Can influence senior engineers, architects and technology executives without relying solely on formal management authority.