OpenShift Architect / SME

Who is HelloKindred?

HelloKindred are specialists in staffing marketing, creative and technology roles, offering a range of talent solutions that can be delivered on-site, remotely or hybrid.

Our vision is to make work accessible and people’s lives better. We do this by disrupting traditional employment barriers – connecting ambitious talent to flexible opportunities with trusted brands.

Anticipated Contract End Date/Length: November 30, 2026

Work set up: Hybrid

Our client in the Information Technology and Services industry is looking for an OpenShift Architect / SME to join the Virtualization Engineering Team within Distributed Compute in CTO Enterprise Services. The OpenShift Engineering SME is responsible for designing, building, operating, and continuously improving the enterprise OpenShift platform for critical business services. This role owns platform reliability, lifecycle management, security hardening, automation, and integration with core enterprise services, acting as the technical authority for OpenShift architecture and operations.

What you will do:

• Own OpenShift cluster lifecycle including Day 0 provisioning, Day 1 configuration, and Day 2 operations.
• Plan and execute platform upgrades, patching, and version compatibility management across OCP, RHCOS, and Operators.
• Design, build, and continuously improve enterprise OpenShift architecture.
• Implement and maintain platform security controls including RBAC, SCC, network policies, image governance, and compliance baselines.
• Build and maintain automation using Ansible, GitOps tools such as ArgoCD and OpenShift GitOps, and Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform or OpenTofu.
• Manage and optimise OpenShift networking including OVN-Kubernetes, Multus, ingress, egress, and load balancer integrations.
• Manage storage integration and lifecycle including StorageClass configuration, CSI drivers, provisioning, and performance tuning.
• Integrate OpenShift with enterprise services including DNS, NTP, LDAP, Active Directory, OIDC, PKI certificates, monitoring, logging, and ServiceNow.
• Define observability standards, SLOs, alerting thresholds, and incident response playbooks.
• Lead root cause analysis for platform incidents and drive preventative actions to improve reliability.
• Support capacity planning, scaling strategy, and platform performance optimisation.
• Partner with application, security, network, and infrastructure teams to enable secure and efficient onboarding.
• Manage vendor engagement including alignment with Red Hat TAM, support case management, and escalation handling.
• Create and maintain technical documentation, runbooks, standards, and knowledge transfer materials.
• Mentor engineering teams and establish best practices for platform operations and governance.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to deliver infrastructure solutions aligned to business needs.
• Participate in disaster recovery and business continuity planning and testing.
• Engage stakeholders to communicate issues, progress, risks, and resolutions for critical incidents.
• Monitor compliance and mitigate risks while ensuring adherence to regulatory standards and internal policies.
• Manage and improve platform offerings throughout their lifecycle using Agile methodologies.
• Share product updates, ensure supported version compliance, and communicate CVEs promptly.
• Provide technical direction across OpenShift, distributed systems, servers, and storage technologies.
• Represent the team during major incidents and provide technical expertise in crisis situations.
• Implement robust monitoring and alerting systems to proactively manage platform health.
• Ensure system availability and performance in line with defined SLAs and SLOs.
• Plan future capacity requirements and optimise system performance through tuning and scaling activities.

• Bachelor’s degree, Diploma, B.E, B.Tech, M.Tech, or M.Sc in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• Minimum twelve years of experience in Linux or platform engineering, with at least three years of hands-on OpenShift or Kubernetes operations in enterprise environments.
• Proven experience operating production OpenShift clusters at scale.
• Strong hands-on expertise in OpenShift including cluster installation, configuration, Operators, upgrades, and troubleshooting.
• Deep knowledge of Kubernetes concepts including scheduling, networking, storage, security, controllers, and CRDs.
• Experience with OpenShift Virtualization or KubeVirt including VM provisioning and lifecycle management.
• Strong Linux administration skills including RHEL or RHCOS, shell scripting, and system troubleshooting.
• Hands-on experience with automation and Infrastructure as Code tools including Ansible, Terraform or OpenTofu, and GitOps platforms.
• Experience with observability tools including Prometheus, Grafana, and logging or tracing platforms.
• Working knowledge of enterprise identity and security integrations including LDAP, Active Directory, OIDC, certificates, and secrets management.
• Familiarity with container security practices and compliance frameworks such as CIS benchmarks and vulnerability management.
• Strong understanding of storage and networking within container platforms including CSI, CNI, ingress, and load balancing.
• Experience in regulated environments such as banking or financial services preferred.
• Red Hat OpenShift or Kubernetes certifications preferred.
• Strong stakeholder communication and cross-team collaboration skills.
• Ability to lead incident response activities and make decisions under pressure.
• Strong ownership mindset and commitment to platform reliability and continuous improvement.

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Candidates must be legally authorized to live and work in the country where the position is based, without requiring employer sponsorship.

HelloKindred is committed to fair, transparent, and inclusive hiring practices. We assess candidates based on skills, experience, and role-related requirements.

We appreciate your interest in this opportunity. While we review every application carefully, only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

HelloKindred is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds and do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.