Azure AKS Lead Kubernetes & Platform Engineer - Remote

Summary: The Azure AKS Lead Kubernetes & Platform Engineer is responsible for designing, building, securing, and operating Azure Kubernetes Service platforms for enterprise-grade cloud applications. This role requires extensive experience in cloud/platform engineering and hands-on expertise in Kubernetes/AKS implementation. The engineer will collaborate with various teams to ensure a scalable and secure Kubernetes platform on Azure. The position is remote and focuses on leading AKS platform architecture and operations.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead Kubernetes and Platform Engineer responsible for designing, building, securing, and operating Azure Kubernetes Service platforms for enterprise-grade cloud applications.
• Lead AKS platform design and implementation; define Kubernetes cluster architecture, node pools, networking, ingress, scaling, and workload isolation.
• Implement CI/CD and GitOps-based deployment patterns; configure Azure networking, private clusters, load balancers, ingress controllers, DNS, certificates, and service mesh where applicable.
• Implement monitoring, logging, alerting, and observability using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Prometheus, Grafana, or equivalent tools.
• Define security controls including RBAC, Azure AD / Entra ID integration, managed identities, Key Vault integration, image scanning, policy enforcement, and secrets management.
• Automate infrastructure using Terraform, Bicep, ARM, Helm, and scripting; support production troubleshooting, performance tuning, upgrades, patching, and incident resolution.
• Create platform standards, runbooks, reusable templates, and operational documentation; mentor engineers and guide application teams on Kubernetes best practices.
• Strong hands-on experience with Azure Kubernetes Service; Kubernetes architecture and operations; Azure cloud services; containerization using Docker; Helm charts; Kubernetes networking, ingress, services, deployments, config maps, secrets, storage classes, and autoscaling.
• Experience with Azure landing zones, enterprise-scale cloud governance, Azure Policy, Defender for Cloud, Azure Container Registry, Argo CD / Flux GitOps, service mesh such as Istio or Linkerd, KEDA, PrometheGrafana, OpenTelemetry, API Management, Azure Front Door, Application Gateway Ingress Controller, container vulnerability scanning, FinOps / cost optimization, multi-region AKS, disaster recovery planning, and public sector or regulated enterprise environments.
• Must be able to independently lead AKS platform architecture and implementation, explain Kubernetes design decisions clearly, troubleshoot real production issues, define secure and scalable platform standards, automate repeatable deployments, guide DevOps practices, and work confidently with architects, security, infrastructure, application, and operations teams.

Key Skills:

• 10+ years overall IT experience, with 5+ years in cloud/platform engineering and 3+ years of hands-on Kubernetes / AKS implementation and operations experience.
• Strong hands-on experience with Azure Kubernetes Service; Kubernetes architecture and operations; Azure cloud services; containerization using Docker; Helm charts; Kubernetes networking, ingress, services, deployments, config maps, secrets, storage classes, and autoscaling.
• CI/CD tools such as Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, or GitLab; Infrastructure as Code using Terraform or Bicep; Linux administration; scripting using Bash, PowerShell, or Python.
• Kubernetes security, RBAC, image registry, secrets management, and policy enforcement; monitoring and troubleshooting production Kubernetes workloads.
• Strong communication and technical leadership skills.

Salary (Rate): undetermined

City: undetermined

Country: undetermined

Working Arrangements: remote

IR35 Status: undetermined

Seniority Level: undetermined

Industry: IT