Senior Kubernetes Software Engineer

Senior Kubernetes Software Engineer – Palo Alto, CA

Broadcom, a VMware subsidiary, invites applications for the Senior Kubernetes Software Engineer position. The role focuses on delivering up‑to‑date and secure Kubernetes and CNCF projects as packages for VMware Cloud Foundation’s vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) and vSphere Supervisor.

The Kubernetes Distribution team in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) works to provide a unified, self‑service experience for deploying and managing virtual machines and containers across on‑premises and public cloud environments. The Senior Engineer will design and perform business‑aligned contributions primarily for releases, security, manageability, scale, and integrations. Ideal candidates have deep expertise in Open Source Software, Kubernetes internals, and community contribution processes.

• Leverage common patterns to develop fixes and features for Kubernetes and CNCF projects.
• Design customer‑oriented and community‑aligned features by building consensus through Key Enhancement Proposals (KEPs) or related open‑source contribution process.
• Ensure explicit Kubernetes version and feature compatibility with continual improvements to automation, pipelines and testing.
• Deliver releases that meet SLAs, architecture, security, and compliance requirements.
• Promote credibility through community interactions and positive contributions.
• Collaborate internally with stakeholders from product, security, infrastructure, and operations teams.

First six months:

• Recognized as an internal expert, advising and influencing across VCF.
• Understand the vision, architecture, and data model of the VKS and Kubernetes Distributions.
• Familiar with common Kubernetes interfaces for runtime, networking, storage, and resource management.
• Have production experience deploying additional packages.
• Ensure components and subsystems work well together.
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes extensibility and reconciliation logic.
• Design, implement, test, and deploy services developed in Go.
• Champion technologies that boost project speed and automation.
• Meet Broadcom and industry standards.

After six months:

• Align future customer needs with community interests in technical areas.
• Recognized technical and community leader across various projects.
• Design and gain approval for a Kubernetes KEP.
• Consistently impact upstream projects through code, architecture, community management, and public representation.
• Introduce new CNCF software components or materially impact existing features for VCF.
• Define and implement process changes to reduce technical debt and improve architecture.
• Lead developer efficiency efforts and improve team culture.
• Mentor junior engineers and coach them into influential voices.

• Develop Kubernetes controllers and patterns written in Go.
• Collaborate with a global community of engineers on CNCF open‑source projects.
• Deliver code changes to open‑source projects and satisfy contribution requirements.
• Advocate priorities with management and ensure alignment on timelines.
• Lead high‑level epics, define requirements, and break work into manageable tasks.
• Write automated tests to validate and secure critical functionalities.
• Mentor junior engineers, providing technical leadership on complex problems.
• Identify key issues, anticipate problems, and propose improvements to business processes.
• Take on‑call responsibilities to triage, troubleshoot, and mitigate production issues.

• Kubernetes expertise and material engineering contribution to at least one CNCF project and various OSS projects.
• Experience with one or more cloud platform architectures.
• History of leading system software projects or teams.
• Good knowledge of distributed systems, databases, algorithms, data structures.
• Strong verbal and written communication skills.
• Bachelor’s degree plus 12+ years of related experience or Master’s degree plus 10+ years of related experience.

• vSphere experience.
• Extensive knowledge and experience with container, kernel, packaging, and operating‑system functionality.
• Operational knowledge of Kubernetes in production environments.
• Material contribution to two or more…