Hire a pragmatic Kubernetes engineer
EKS, Helm, ArgoCD, autoscaling. AWS + Docker + K8s background. Honest about when K8s is not the answer.
Who this is for
Funded startup that decided on Kubernetes and needs a senior to own it.
The pain today
- Kubernetes is a category on its own — no in-house owner.
- The last contractor built something operable only by them.
- Cluster upgrades are a quarterly cliff nobody wants to approach.
- Networking (CNI, ingress, DNS) is mystery meat.
The outcome you get
- A senior engineer with AWS + Docker + Kubernetes background.
- Cluster operable by an in-house team after handoff.
- GitOps discipline via ArgoCD or Flux.
- Written runbook for the 5 things that go wrong most often.
What hiring senior K8s should get you
Senior Kubernetes engineering is not just the Kubernetes-specific knowledge. It is: operability (can an in-house engineer debug a pod that will not schedule?), upgrade discipline (cluster and control plane upgrades are scheduled and rehearsed, not feared), cost awareness (spot instances where safe, cluster autoscaler tuned to actual workload, Fargate profiles vs EC2 node groups), and security (pod security standards, NetworkPolicies, IRSA for AWS access). Most K8s contractors leave behind a cluster that works until it does not. Senior engineering leaves behind a cluster the team can keep running.
Core stack + adjacent scale references
Kubernetes is in my core stack per SITE-FACTS §8 alongside Docker and AWS. Container-shipping discipline (Docker multi-stage, registry strategy, secrets management, CI/CD to ECS Fargate) is proven at GigEasy and Imohub. The Kubernetes-specific work — EKS clusters, Helm charts for app services, ArgoCD for GitOps, autoscaling tuned to actual load — is the same discipline layered onto a different orchestrator.
Operability is the real deliverable
A K8s setup that works is not the point — every competent engineer can get a cluster running. A K8s setup that the team can operate after I leave is the point. That means: documented runbooks (what to do when a pod is pending, when a deployment fails to roll, when a node goes NotReady), clear separation between platform concerns (cluster, ingress, cert-manager) and application concerns (Helm charts per service), and a written upgrade plan. Operability is boring, and boring is what ships.
Pricing and engagement
$3,499 per month flat. 2 to 4 day delivery cycles. Daily async updates. 14-day money-back. Cancel anytime. Work Made for Hire — cluster configuration, Helm charts, runbooks, all yours.
Recent proof
A comparable engagement, delivered and documented.
Built and shipped an investor-ready MVP from scratch
Built the entire technological base and delivered MVP in just 3 weeks, enabling a successful rapid launch and investor demo.
Frequently asked questions
The questions prospects ask before they book.
- Are you CKA-certified?
- Not currently — practical experience over certifications. Kubernetes in core stack plus production container work. If a client procurement process requires CKA, I can sit the exam.
- Do you set up multi-cluster?
- Only when the business case is real. Most startups do not need multi-cluster. Single cluster with proper namespaces, RBAC, and resource quotas usually carries them to Series B.
- Service mesh (Istio, Linkerd)?
- Only when the team can operate it. Most startups do not need a service mesh — ingress plus internal DNS plus sane services is enough.
- Observability stack?
- Prometheus plus Grafana plus Loki for most teams. Datadog or Honeycomb when the budget allows and the team values the managed experience.
- Can you migrate us off Kubernetes?
- Yes. Common migrations: K8s to ECS Fargate (simpler), K8s to Fly.io (smaller team). The audit frames the decision honestly — sometimes simpler is the right answer.
Ready to start?
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