QA automation/Devops engineer for k0rdent KCM team (Contractor for 6 months.)

Testing Strategy & Leadership

• Contribute to driving the overall QA strategy for Kubernetes and cloud-native environments, aligning quality goals with business objectives and release deadlines.
• Evaluate and champion best-in-class testing best practices and frameworks for distributed systems.
• Lead risk analysis and test planning for large-scale, multi-cloud infrastructure and container orchestration.

Architecting Test Systems

• Architect test frameworks and infrastructure for validating microservices and infrastructure components in multi-cluster and hybrid-cloud environments.
• Oversee the design of complex test scenarios simulating production-like workloads, resource scaling, failure injection, and recovery across distributed clusters.

Automation & Scalability

• Spearhead the development of scalable and maintainable test automation integrated with CI/CD (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, etc.).
• Leverage Kubernetes APIs, Helm, and service mesh tools to build comprehensive automation coverage, including system health, failover behavior, and network resilience.
• Promote test infrastructure-as-code and drive IaC forward on the team making sure the infrastructure code is repeatable, extensible and reliable.

Mentorship & Technical Influence

• Mentor QA engineers and developers in advanced testing techniques such as: risk-based testing, chaos engineering, performance and load testing etc.
• Serve as the QA authority in design reviews, production readiness assessments, and incident retrospectives(escaped defects).
• Collaborate with and devops engineers to refine monitoring, alerting, and debugging strategies for testing automation being run in CI/CD.

Quality Advocacy & Continuous Improvement

• Establish quality gates, release readiness metrics, and data driven feedback loops to ensure released software is production quality.
• Drive initiatives to integrate performance, security, and chaos testing into the development lifecycle.
• Advocate for a culture of quality across teams and influence architecture decisions with testing in mind.

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Experience

• 10+ years in software testing or quality engineering roles, with 4+ years focused on Kubernetes, cloud-native applications, and distributed systems.

• Proven leadership experience in building and scaling test strategies in enterprise-grade environments.

Technical Proficiency

• Deep understanding of Kubernetes internals, cluster lifecycle management, Helm, service meshes (e.g., Istio or Linkerd), and network policies.
• Strong scripting and automation capabilities (Python, Pytest, Bash, etc.).
• Familiarity with observability stacks (Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger), Kubernetes security (RBAC, secrets management), and performance benchmarking tools (e.g., K6).
• Solid grounding in cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, GCP), infrastructure provisioning, and containerized CI/CD.
• Moderate to advanced linux knowledge and proficiency is required: Bash scripting and debugging, systemd/logs, networking/firewalling/routing, certificate/PKI management, containers (Docker/containerd), and Kubernetes tooling (kubectl/Helm with OCI registries, GitOps/Flux) to install, test, and troubleshoot multi-cluster environments.

Leadership & Collaboration

• Exceptional problem-solving and architectural thinking.
• Experience influencing cross-functional teams and senior leadership.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills for technical and executive-level audiences.
• Mentorship and coaching of 1 or more junior members on the team especially around testing fundamentals, troubleshooting and automation.

Preferred Extras

• Contributions to open-source Kubernetes or QA tooling projects.
• Experience implementing chaos engineering in Kubernetes environments.
• Certifications such as CKA, CKAD, or AWS Certified DevOps Engineer.

Work with an established Silicon Valley leader in the cloud infrastructure industry;

• Work with exceptionally passionate, talented and engaging colleagues, helping Fortune 500 and Global 2000 customers implement next-generation cloud technologies;
• Be a part of cutting-edge, open-source innovation;
• Thrive in the high-energy environment of a young company where openness, collaboration, risk-taking, and continuous growth are valued;
• Professional development and training;
• Attend conferences and working groups;
• Company outings, happy hours, hackathons, and tech talks;
• Receive a competitive compensation package with a strong benefits plan.