Kubernetes Platform Engineer

Spektrum supports apex purchasers (NATO UN EU and National Government and Defence) and their Tier 1 supplier ecosystem with a wide range of specialist services. We provide our clients with professional services specialised aerospace and defence sales delivery and operational subject matter expertise. We are looking for personnel to join our team and support key client projects.

Who we are supporting

The NATO Communication and Information Agency (NCIA) is responsible for providing secure and effective communications and information technology (IT) services to NATOs member countries and its partners. The agency was established in 2012 and is headquartered in Brussels Belgium.

The NCIA provides a wide range of services including:

• Cyber Security: The NCIA provides advanced cybersecurity solutions to protect NATOs communication networks and information systems against cyber threats.
• Command and Control Systems: The NCIA develops and maintains the systems used by NATOs military commanders to plan and execute operations.
• Satellite Communications: The NCIA provides satellite communications services to enable secure and reliable communications between NATO forces.
• Electronic Warfare: The NCIA provides electronic warfare services to support NATOs mission to detect deny and defeat threats to its communication networks.
• Information Management: The NCIA manages NATOs information technology infrastructure including its databases applications and servers.

Overall the NCIA plays a critical role in ensuring the security and effectiveness of NATOs communication and information technology capabilities.

The program

Assistance and Advisory Service (AAS)

The NATO Communications and Information Agency (NCI Agency) is NATOs principal C3 capability deliverer and CIS service provider. It provides maintains and defends the NATO enterprise-wide information technology infrastructure to enable Allies to consult together under Article IV and when required stand together in the face of attack under Article V.

To provide these critical services in the modern evolving dynamic environment the NCI Agency needs to build and maintain high performance-engaged workforce. The NCI Agency workforce strategically consists of three major categorises: NATO International Civilians (NIC)s Military (Mil) and Interim Workforce Consultants (IWC)s. The IWCs are a critical part of the overall NCI Agency workforce and make up approximately 15 percent of the total workforce.

Role ID C005025

Role Background

• The Kubernetes Platform Operations and Maintenance Expert will report to the Head of Processing and Storage Section.
• Deliver monthly artifacts; maintain cluster operations; perform upgrades and patching; maintain documentation; provide knowledge transfer; ensure compliance with defined performance SLA and internal procedures.
• Participate in weekly status update meetings activity planning and other meetings as instructed physically in the office or in person via electronic means using Conference Call capabilities according to the Team Leaders instructions.
• Tooling stack (inside the cluster): The Kubernetes Platform Operations and Maintenance Expert operate and maintain the following Kubernetes native tooling:
• Prometheus & Grafana; Logging stack; NGINX or ingress; Cilium CNI; Backup tooling; On prem registry (e.g. Harbor/SUSE); ArgoCD GitOps; Metrics server; Cert manager; Zabbix integration hooks.
• Out of Scope: Underlying VMs storage and network infrastructure (NCIA responsibility); disaster Recovery tests (NCIA responsibility; Service Contractor provides performance artifacts); application development or debugging; any activity outside the Kubernetes clusters.

Role Duties and Responsibilities

Deliverables:

• Cluster Health Report - node health pod health workloads resource utilization cluster events degraded components.
• Security Compliance Report - CIS benchmark checks RBAC audit network policy compliance vulnerability scan results remediation actions.
• Capacity and Performance Report - CPU/memory/storage trends saturation risks performance anomalies capacity forecasting.
• Patching and Upgrade Report - Applied patches pending patches quarterly upgrade status upgrade readiness checks.
• Incident and RCA Report - Summary of P1P3 incidents root cause analysis corrective actions prevention measures.
• Configuration Drift Report - Comparison of cluster configuration vs approved baseline drift items remediation plan.
• Monthly Change Log - All changes applied to clusters manifests GitOps commits registry updates configuration changes
• Monthly Risk Register Update - Identified risks severity mitigation actions owner expected resolution timeline.

Enabling activities:

• Daily monitoring of cluster health and alerts.
• Node lifecycle operations (join drain cordon replacement).
• Management of Kubernetes components (CNI CSI ingress metrics server CoreDNS).
• Certificate rotation and secrets management.
• RBAC administration and periodic audits.
• Network policy management.
• Vulnerability scanning and remediation inside the cluster.
• Backup operations using Commvault Velero/K10 (excluding DR tests).
• Maintaining documentation and runbooks.
• Assisting application teams with deployment troubleshooting.
• Participation in planning meetings retrospectives and workshops

Essential Skills Experience and Certifications

• 3 years hands on Kubernetes operations experience.
• Experience with SUSE RKE2 Kubernetes distributions.
• Experience with monitoring logging repositories ingress CNI and backup tooling

Desirable Skills Experience and Certifications

• Prior experience of working in an international environment comprising both military and civilian elements;
• Knowledge of NATO responsibilities and organization including ACO and ACT

Essential Education

• University Degree 3 years relevant experience or equivalent.

Working Location

• Brussels Belgium

Working Policy

• Full time on-site

Travel

• No travel required

Security Clearance

• Valid National or NATO Secret personal security clearance