Kubernetes Application Platform Engineer

Technology, Data & Digital · IT Infrastructure & Security · DevOps · Software Engineering

In short

Qualcomm seeks an experienced Application Platform Engineer to design, build, and operate enterprise-grade platforms, focusing on Kubernetes and Jenkins. This role emphasizes platform reliability, automation, and self-service enablement for application teams, without direct application development.

Responsibilities

Own the design, implementation, and lifecycle management of shared application platforms, including Kubernetes clusters and Jenkins infrastructure.
Operate enterprise Jenkins as a service, supporting shared and dedicated controller models with strong tenancy isolation and RBAC.
Build and maintain secure, scalable Kubernetes platforms for hosting internal applications and CI/CD workloads.
Define and enforce platform standards, guardrails, and best practices for application onboarding and operations.
Partner with application teams to enable smooth onboarding, troubleshooting, and production readiness.
Drive automation-first operations for provisioning, upgrades, patching, and lifecycle management of platform components.
Collaborate with security teams to implement secure-by-default platform architectures.
Ensure high platform reliability through monitoring, alerting, capacity planning, and incident response.
Continuously improve platform scalability, performance, and developer experience.

Requirements

3+ years of relevant IT experience with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field or 5+ years of relevant experience without.
Strong experience in Linux system administration, including troubleshooting, performance tuning, and OS-level security hardening.
Hands-on expertise with containerization using Docker, including image and container lifecycle management, Dockerfile authoring, optimization, and container networking/runtime troubleshooting.
Deep understanding of Kubernetes platform operations, including control plane and worker node architecture, Pods, Deployments, Services, Ingress, networking, manifests, Helm, cluster upgrades, scaling, backup/restore, and lifecycle management.
Proven experience administering Jenkins infrastructure at scale, including controller and agent architecture, installation, upgrades, plugin governance, configuration management, supporting shared/multi-tenant CI, and container-based Jenkins agents on Kubernetes.
Strong knowledge of CI/CD platform concepts, including pipeline enablement frameworks, build/test/deployment automation patterns, and CI platform reliability/capacity planning.
Hands-on experience with monitoring and observability platforms such as Splunk and Datadog, including platform-level dashboards, alerting, SLA/SLO tracking, and log analysis.
Experience provisioning and operating cloud infrastructure, with working knowledge of AWS services such as EC2, S3, IAM, VPC, baseline cloud security controls, and cost monitoring.
Strong fundamentals in networking, including DNS, IP addressing, routing, load balancing, and connectivity troubleshooting.
Ability to build automation using Shell, Python, or similar scripting languages.
Experience with Git-based version control, including branching strategies and repository governance.
Excellent problem-solving skills across platform, infrastructure, and CI/CD layers.
Strong professional attributes including ownership mindset, operational discipline, collaboration, and accountability.

Desired Qualifications

Practical experience with platform engineering or DevOps enablement teams in large enterprise environments.
Experience operating microservices platforms on Kubernetes, including secure service-to-service communication, platform-level observability (metrics, logs, traces), and traffic routing/policy enforcement.
Hands-on experience with Kubernetes ingress and traffic management, including Gateway API, NGINX Ingress, Kong, and enterprise API management platforms such as Apigee.
Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio or equivalent) for security, traffic management, and observability.
Familiarity with Kubernetes load-balancing solutions such as MetalLB.
Hands-on experience with HashiCorp Vault for centralized secrets management, dynamic credential generation, and tenant self-service workflows.
Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, or equivalent.
Exposure to security and compliance practices, including certificate lifecycle management, IAM and RBAC, secrets handling, and Kubernetes network policies.
Familiarity with GitOps-based deployment models and related tooling (Argo CD, Flux, or similar).
Industry-recognized certifications such as CKA, CKAD, or equivalent.
Strong communication skills, with the ability to translate platform capabilities into clear guidance for application teams.
Demonstrated commitment to continuous learning and platform modernization.
Experience working with Apigee API management platform, including API proxy development, policy configuration, and troubleshooting in enterprise environments.

Benefits

Qualcomm is an equal opportunity employer.
Qualcomm is committed to providing an accessible process.
Qualcomm will provide reasonable accommodations to support individuals with disabilities to be able participate in the hiring process.
Qualcomm is also committed to making our workplace accessible for individuals with disabilities.
Qualcomm expects its employees to abide by all applicable policies and procedures, including but not limited to security and other requirements regarding protection of Company confidential information and other confidential and/or proprietary information, to the extent those requirements are permissible under applicable law.

Skills

LinuxDockerKubernetesJenkinsCI/CDSplunkDatadogAWSEC2S3IAMVPCDNSPythonShell scriptingGitTerraformCloudFormationHashiCorp VaultArgo CDFluxApigeeIstioMetalLBNGINXKong

#DevOps#Platform Engineering#Kubernetes#Application Platform#CI/CD#Jenkins#Cloud#AWS#Containerization#Observability#Automation#Security