Sr Engineer - Managed Kubernetes

About us:

As a Fortune 50 company with more than 400,000 team members worldwide, Target is an iconic brand and one of America's leading retailers. At Target, we have a timeless purpose and a proven strategy and that hasn’t happened by accident. Some of the best minds from diverse backgrounds come together at Target to redefine retail in an inclusive learning environment that values people and delivers world-class outcomes. That winning formula is especially apparent in Bengaluru, where Target in India operates as a fully integrated part of Target’s global team and has more than 4,000 team members supporting the company’s global strategy and operations.

Joining Target means promoting a culture of mutual care and respect and striving to make the most meaningful and positive impact. Becoming a Target team member means joining a community that values diverse backgrounds. We believe your unique perspective is important, and you'll build relationships by being authentic and respectful. At Target, inclusion is part of the core value. We aim to create equitable experiences for all, regardless of their dimensions of difference. As an equal opportunity employer, Target provides diverse opportunities for everyone to grow and win

Team Overview

Managed Kubernetes is part of Target Infrastructure Services, providing the foundational container platform for deploying and operating applications across Target data centers and public cloud environments. The platform enables engineering teams to build and operate scalable, reliable services without having to manage the complexity of the underlying Kubernetes infrastructure. Through API- and UI-driven automation, teams can provision, upgrade, and manage Kubernetes clusters at scale across on-premises and cloud environments. The platform also provides curated capabilities for security, observability, compliance, and resiliency. By providing a consistent Kubernetes experience across Target data centers and public cloud, Managed Kubernetes reduces operational complexity, improves reliability, and accelerates application and platform development across Target.

Position Overview

We are looking for a Senior Engineer – Managed Kubernetes Platform to design, build, and operate reliable cloud-native platform capabilities across public cloud, hybrid cloud, and on-premises environments. In this role, you will own Kubernetes platform components and problem spaces end-to-end, independently solve complex technical and operational problems, and partner with product and engineering teams to deliver secure, scalable, and easy-to-use platform services. You will bring deep Kubernetes and platform engineering expertise, improve how the platform performs in production, and help other engineers grow through technical guidance and constructive feedback.

Responsibilities

• Own Kubernetes platform services or components through design, implementation, deployment, and production operation; make sound decisions that balance customer needs, reliability, security, maintainability, and delivery constraints.
• Build and maintain platform automation, tooling, controllers, and services, primarily using Go (Golang), and contribute production-quality code with appropriate tests and clear operational behavior.
• Provision, configure, upgrade, troubleshoot, and optimize Kubernetes clusters and supporting infrastructure across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments, including Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) where applicable.
• Design and improve Kubernetes networking and connectivity, including CNI, ingress, services, network policies, load balancing, traffic routing, and service-to-service communication.
• Automate infrastructure and platform changes using Infrastructure as Code and Kubernetes tools such as Terraform, Helm, and Kustomize; implement and improve GitOps workflows with Argo CD and/or Flux.
• Improve platform observability and operations through useful metrics, logs, traces, dashboards, alerts, health indicators, and service thresholds; use production data to identify patterns and drive reliability and performance improvements.
• Design for failure and recovery by establishing clear failure boundaries, applying retries, timeouts, and other appropriate resilience patterns, and ensuring services degrade gracefully.
• Participate in and independently manage incidents for owned systems, coordinate investigation and resolution, communicate status clearly, and follow through on root-cause analysis and reliability improvements.
• Apply secure-by-default practices to platform services and automation, understand relevant threats, manage secrets appropriately, remediate findings, and work with security and platform partners on effective controls.
• Lead technical discussions within the team and collaborate with partner teams on multi-component designs, integrations, operational improvements, and delivery of platform capabilities.
• Review code and designs with a focus on quality, testability, security, and operational risk; provide coaching-oriented feedback and mentor engineers in Kubernetes and platform engineering practices.
• Document technical evaluations, decisions, runbooks, and operational procedures so that engineers and stakeholders can understand and support the platform.

Required Skills and Experience

• Strong software development experience in Go (Golang), including the ability to build, test, troubleshoot, and maintain production services or platform tooling.
• Hands-on experience designing, administering, and operating Kubernetes platforms, including cluster provisioning, configuration, upgrades, troubleshooting, and production support.
• Experience operating Kubernetes on a public cloud platform; GCP and GKE experience is preferred, with AWS, Azure, or equivalent cloud experience also relevant
• Strong understanding of Kubernetes architecture and networking, including CNI plugins, ingress controllers, Services, Network Policies, load balancing, traffic routing, and connectivity.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code and Kubernetes configuration or deployment tools such as Terraform, Helm, and Kustomize.
• Experience implementing GitOps practices using tools such as Argo CD and/or Flux, and building or maintaining CI/CD automation for platform changes.
• Experience with platform observability, including metrics, logging, monitoring, alerting, and distributed tracing, and using operational data to diagnose issues and improve services.
• Experience administering Linux systems and troubleshooting container runtime or host-level issues.
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes storage, including CSI drivers, Persistent Volumes, Persistent Volume Claims, Storage Classes, StatefulSets, and backup or recovery considerations.
• Demonstrated ability to independently investigate problems involving multiple connected components or systems, identify root causes, and implement durable improvements.
• Ability to communicate technical decisions clearly, collaborate with business and engineering partners, and explain platform concepts to audiences with different levels of technical context.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 5+ years of experience in software engineering, platform engineering, cloud engineering, infrastructure engineering, or a related field, including meaningful hands-on Kubernetes experience.
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and/or Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) certification.
• Experience with multi-cluster or hybrid Kubernetes environments, cluster lifecycle automation, and platform self-service capabilities.
• Experience with disaster recovery planning, performance or capacity testing, and safe release practices such as progressive rollout and rollback.
• Experience contributing to shared engineering practices, technical learning, or open-source projects.