Responsibilities
About the Role
This outstanding role is intended for a senior hands-on engineer with 8–11 years of experience in middleware, application hosting, infrastructure operations, and modern container platforms. Our organization is undergoing a transition-state environment where the primary focus is on Amazon EKS, Kubernetes, container workload operations, automation, observability, and production reliability, while also maintaining legacy middleware platforms during migration and modernization.
Key Responsibilities
- Coordinate, support, automate, troubleshoot, and improve containerized workloads on EKS/Kubernetes with production-grade reliability.
- Maintain WebSphere/Liberty/API Gateway and related middleware during the transition period, including patching, certificates, JVM support, and migration readiness inputs.
- Own day-2 operations for EKS/Kubernetes workloads including deployment support, access, namespace management, health checks, scaling, configuration, troubleshooting, and controlled releases.
- Build, deploy, upgrade, rollback, and troubleshoot workloads by working with container images, Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, ArgoCD/GitOps, kubectl, AWS CLI, and CI/CD pipelines.
- Conduct L3 troubleshooting for pods, services, ingress, DNS, networking, secrets, storage, node readiness, scheduling failures, failed deployments, failed releases, and workload performance problems.
- Partner with application and platform teams to modernize VM/middleware-hosted workloads into containerized deployment models with clear readiness, dependency, and operational acceptance inputs.
- Apply secure operating methods in IAM, RBAC, secrets management, TLS/certificates, patching, vulnerability remediation, audit controls, and least-privilege access.
- Drive automation and standardization through reusable scripts, Helm patterns, runbooks, GitOps workflows, operational dashboards, and reduced manual intervention.
- Build and maintain runbooks, SOPs, RCA documents, KT material, migration notes, and support documentation to help the team transition from legacy middleware to container-first operations.
- Provide on-call support for priority incidents and work closely with incident, problem, change, security, audit and application teams to ensure production stability.
Qualifications
Required Qualifications
- 8–11 years of experience in infrastructure, middleware, application hosting, platform engineering, or managing production operations.
- Proven experience with Kubernetes, EKS, containers, automation, and cloud-based workload operations.
- Extensive practical experience in managing Kubernetes components such as Pods, Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Services, Ingress, DNS, ConfigMaps, Secrets, PV/PVC, StorageClass, Network Policies, and Autoscaling.
- Amazon EKS workload operations including namespaces, access controls, IAM/RBAC, node health, workload placement, scaling, deployments, upgrades, rollbacks, and day-2 support.
- Container runtime and image lifecycle experience using Docker or equivalent container tooling, including build, tagging, scanning, deployment, and troubleshooting.
- Hands-on experience with Helm charts, crafting Kubernetes YAML, GitOps / ArgoCD synchronization and rollback strategies, and CI/CD integration for workload deployments.
- Strong troubleshooting capability across pod crashes, image pull problems, service discovery, ingress/routing, DNS, network policies, storage mounts, scheduling failures, unsuccessful rollouts, and application availability challenges.
- AWS operational expertise including VPC networking, routing, IAM, CloudWatch/observability, security groups/firewall coordination, and production support procedures.
Preferred Skills
- Working knowledge of WebSphere Application Server, WebSphere Liberty, WebLogic, BPM and API Gateway platforms such as Apigee or equivalent.
- Experience in middleware patching, upgrades, addressing vulnerabilities, coordinating OS/DB maintenance, handling service requests, and supporting production environments.
- Understanding of REST, SOAP, API, JSON, XML, OAuth/token concepts, Postman-based API validation, and API troubleshooting during transition-state operations.
Behavioral Expectations
- Strong ownership approach with the ability to independently drive technical issues to closure.
- Clear technical communication with application teams, peers, service owners, and leadership.
- Ability to guide peers, document findings and support cross-skilling from legacy middleware to containers.
- Methodical approach for change field, incident response, RCA quality, audit controls, and production stability.
- Curious, dedicated learner willing to work across Kubernetes, AWS, automation, middleware and API platform boundaries.
Additional Information
Our Engineering Culture
Through our product-driven Agile/Lean DevOps environment, we've fostered a culture of innovation and experimentation across our development teams. As a customer-focused organization, we work closely with our end users and product owners to understand and rapidly respond to emerging business needs.
Collaboration is embedded into everything we do – from the products we develop to the quality service we provide. We're driven by the belief that diversity of thought, background, and perspective is critical to creating the best products and experiences for our customers.
Experience Principal
At Principal, we value connecting on both a personal and professional level. Together, we're imagining a more purpose-led future for financial services – and that starts with you. Our success depends on the unique experiences, backgrounds, and talents of our employees. And we support our employees the same way we support our customers: with comprehensive, competitive benefit offerings crafted to protect their physical, financial, and social well-being. Check out our careers site to learn more about our purpose, values and benefits.
Principal is an Equal Opportunity Employer
All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, or veteran status.
