Cloud Platform / Site Reliability Engineer (SRE)

Cloud Platform / Site Reliability Engineer – Kubernetes, Automation & Private Cloud

Department: IT / Operations

Employment Type: Full-time

Location: Remote – Canada

Job Summary

ThinkOn is seeking a Cloud Platform / Site Reliability Engineer to operate, automate, scale, secure, and continuously improve the platforms that power ThinkOn’s private cloud services.

This role combines Site Reliability Engineering, Kubernetes platform engineering, Infrastructure-as-Code, observability, automation, and private cloud operations.

You will support ThinkOn’s current VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) environments, VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS), GPU-enabled infrastructure and platform services, while helping build capabilities that remain portable to upstream and open-source Kubernetes environments.

The successful candidate will take end-to-end operational ownership of platform services rather than operating within a single technology silo. You will troubleshoot across infrastructure, networking, storage, Kubernetes, observability and platform-service layers; automate repetitive work; improve reliability; and help transition new services from Architecture into Operations.

Engineers in this role will cross-train across the platform to provide operational redundancy and eliminate single-person dependencies.

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Key Responsibilities

Kubernetes & Kubernetes-as-a-Service

* Deploy, operate, scale, upgrade, troubleshoot and recover production Kubernetes clusters.

* Support VMware Supervisor, VMware Kubernetes Service (VKS), VCF Automation and upstream/open-source Kubernetes environments.

* Operate Kubernetes cluster lifecycle technologies including Cluster API and related controllers.

* Troubleshoot:

* Control plane and worker nodes

* MachineDeployments and node pools

* Controllers and operators

* CRDs

* Admission webhooks

* Scheduling and affinity

* RBAC and service accounts

* DNS

* Networking

* Storage

* Certificates

* Kubernetes APIs

* Develop and operate reusable Kubernetes-as-a-Service capabilities for tenant and customer environments.

* Support Kubernetes multi-tenancy, namespaces, quotas, policies, isolation and self-service.

* Maintain Kubernetes lifecycle processes including provisioning, scaling, remediation, upgrade, backup, recovery and retirement.

Helm, GitOps & Application Delivery

* Deploy and lifecycle-manage platform services using Helm.

* Troubleshoot Helm templates, values, dependencies, upgrades, rollbacks and rendered manifests.

* Implement declarative configuration and desired-state management.

* Build and operate GitOps workflows using Argo CD, Flux or equivalent technologies.

* Operate GitOps at multi-cluster and multi-tenant scale.

* Manage Kubernetes add-ons through automated and declarative lifecycle processes.

* Integrate platform delivery with GitLab CI/CD pipelines.

* Maintain platform configuration and infrastructure as version-controlled, peer-reviewed and reproducible code.

Infrastructure-as-Code & Automation

* Build and maintain infrastructure using Terraform.

* Develop reusable Terraform modules and standardized deployment patterns.

* Manage Terraform state, environment promotion and automated change workflows.

* Develop Ansible automation for platform and operating-system configuration.

* Use Python, Bash, PowerShell, APIs and SDKs to automate platform lifecycle activities.

* Integrate platform automation with CI/CD pipelines.

* Use vendor-neutral APIs and OpenAPI-based interfaces wherever practical.

* Continually identify and eliminate repetitive operational toil.

VMware Cloud Foundation

* Deploy, operate and lifecycle-manage VMware Cloud Foundation environments including:

* ESXi

* vCenter

* vSAN

* NSX

* SDDC Manager

* VCF Operations

* VCF Automation

* Supervisor

* VKS

* Perform platform upgrades, patching, lifecycle management and fleet operations.

* Support automated host provisioning, capacity expansion and infrastructure lifecycle activities.

* Support current and future VCF releases while maintaining operational practices that are portable to non-VMware platforms.

* Operate VCF through APIs, automation and Infrastructure-as-Code rather than relying solely on manual administration.

Site Reliability Engineering

* Apply SRE principles to production cloud and Kubernetes platforms.

* Define and maintain meaningful SLIs, SLOs and service-health indicators.

* Monitor service availability, latency, saturation, capacity and error conditions.

* Reduce operational toil through automation.

* Identify recurring failures and engineer permanent solutions rather than repeatedly applying manual fixes.

* Participate in production incident response and act as an incident owner where appropriate.

* Perform root cause analysis and blameless post-incident reviews.

* Track corrective actions through completion.

* Develop resilience, failure-recovery and disaster-recovery procedures.

* Perform capacity planning and identify platform scaling risks before they become incidents.

* Continuously improve MTTR, availability and operational efficiency.

Observability

* Build and operate observability capabilities using:

* Prometheus

* Grafana

* OpenTelemetry

* Zabbix

* Loki

* Fluent Bit

* Splunk or equivalent technologies

* Build Prometheus metrics, exporters, recording rules and alerts.

* Develop Grafana dashboards for:

* Kubernetes

* VMware infrastructure

* GPU infrastructure

* Platform services

* Capacity

* Performance

* Application and service health

* Integrate infrastructure, Kubernetes and application telemetry to support end-to-end troubleshooting.

* Implement distributed metrics, logs, events and telemetry collection using OpenTelemetry and related standards.

* Tune alert thresholds and eliminate noisy or non-actionable alerts.

* Integrate monitoring with on-call, ticketing and incident-management systems.

* Support multi-cluster and fleet-wide observability.

* Develop observability capabilities that remain portable between VCF and open-source Kubernetes environments.

Networking & Load Balancing

* Troubleshoot networking across infrastructure and Kubernetes layers.

* Support:

* TCP/IP

* Routing

* DNS

* DHCP/IPAM

* VLAN/VXLAN

* BGP/EVPN

* MTU

* TLS

* Network policy

* Load balancing

* Operate VMware NSX and VPC-based networking.

* Support VMware Avi / NSX Advanced Load Balancer and equivalent load-balancing platforms.

* Operate Kubernetes Service, Ingress and Gateway API connectivity.

* Support Kubernetes CNI technologies including Antrea, Cilium, Calico, Multus or equivalent.

* Support multi-network and multi-NIC Kubernetes architectures where workload, storage or high-performance traffic requires isolation.

* Understand Kubernetes IPAM and advanced networking concepts.

* Support integration between private-cloud overlays and physical network fabrics.

Platform Services

Operate, troubleshoot and lifecycle-manage services such as:

* Harbor and OCI container registries

* HashiCorp Vault and secrets-management systems

* Certificate management and PKI

* Database-as-a-Service

* PostgreSQL and MySQL

* Velero and Kubernetes backup/recovery

* Redis and Kubernetes operators

* S3-compatible object storage

* OpenSearch and logging platforms

* Kubernetes policy and admission-control services

* Developer and platform self-service services

Support installation, configuration, upgrade, migration, backup, recovery, monitoring and operational handover for these services.

Security, Policy & Compliance

* Implement and maintain Kubernetes and infrastructure RBAC.

* Support federated identity and OIDC-based authentication.

* Operate certificate and credential lifecycle processes.

* Implement policy-as-code using technologies such as OPA Gatekeeper, Kyverno or equivalent.

* Detect and remediate configuration drift.

* Support automated security and compliance validation.

* Participate in vulnerability and CVE remediation.

* Support hardened Kubernetes node images and automated operating-system patching.

* Work with Security teams to meet Protected B, ITSG-33, PBMM and other applicable compliance requirements.

* Support Zero Trust and multi-tenant isolation principles.

Storage & Data Services

* Troubleshoot Kubernetes persistent storage, CSI, storage classes, snapshots and volume lifecycle.

* Support vSAN and external storage platforms.

* Support NFS and shared-storage integration where required.

* Operate backup, restore and disaster-recovery workflows.

* Support S3-compatible object storage and object-storage consumption by Kubernetes and application workloads.

* Understand data protection requirements across both VM and Kubernetes workloads.

AI & GPU Platform Operations

* Support GPU-enabled infrastructure and Kubernetes environments.

* Operate and troubleshoot:

* NVIDIA GPU Operator

* vGPU

* MIG

* GPU scheduling

* GPU device plugins

* GPU licensing

* GPU node configuration

* High-performance networking

* RDMA where applicable

* Support NVIDIA and other accelerator technologies as platform requirements evolve.

* Monitor GPU utilization, memory, power, temperature, throughput and workload performance.

* Build Grafana and Prometheus-based observability for AI and GPU workloads.

* Support private AI and model-serving platforms from an infrastructure and SRE perspective.

* Support secure multi-tenant AI infrastructure and model-serving services.

Platform APIs & Programmability

* Use REST APIs, OpenAPI specifications and platform SDKs to automate Day-1 and Day-2 operations.

* Develop platform integrations using Python, Terraform, PowerCLI and other appropriate tooling.

* Build reusable automation rather than performing repetitive manual UI operations.

* Integrate infrastructure and platform APIs into GitLab CI/CD and operational workflows.

* Evaluate new platform capabilities and determine how they can be safely automated and operationalized.

Service Transition & Operational Ownership

* Work closely with Architecture during the introduction of new services and technologies.

* Participate in implementation and progressively assume operational ownership.

* Validate operational readiness including:

* Monitoring

* Alerting

* Capacity

* Backup

* Recovery

* Security

* Upgrade procedures

* Automation

* Documentation

* Create SOPs, runbooks and troubleshooting guides.

* Train and mentor the wider Operations team.

* Lead subsequent deployments and upgrades after initial architecture implementation.

* Own platform issues through resolution and involve Architecture when architectural change or design decisions are required.

Operational Redundancy

* Cross-train across critical platform services.

* Act as both primary and secondary owner of assigned technologies.

* Ensure routine operations and incident-response procedures can be performed by another engineer.

* Prevent single-person dependencies through:

* Documentation

* Automation

* Peer review

* Knowledge sharing

* Pairing

* Operational rotation

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Required Skills & Experience

* 5+ years of experience in Site Reliability Engineering, Platform Engineering, Cloud Infrastructure, Kubernetes Engineering or a related field.

* Strong production Kubernetes administration and troubleshooting experience.

* Strong Linux administration and troubleshooting skills.

* Strong hands-on Terraform experience.

* Strong hands-on Helm experience.

* Experience building or maintaining CI/CD pipelines.

* Experience with Git-based engineering and Infrastructure-as-Code workflows.

* Strong experience with Prometheus and Grafana or comparable observability platforms.

* Understanding of OpenTelemetry and modern metrics/logging architectures.

* Strong networking fundamentals including TCP/IP, routing, DNS, TLS and load balancing.

* Experience automating operational work using Python, Bash or equivalent languages.

* Experience supporting production incidents and performing root cause analysis.

* Understanding of Kubernetes storage, networking, RBAC, scheduling and cluster lifecycle.

* Ability to troubleshoot across infrastructure, networking, storage, Kubernetes and platform-service boundaries.

* Demonstrated ability to reduce manual operational toil through engineering and automation.

* Strong documentation and knowledge-transfer skills.

* Ability to learn and operate both commercial and open-source infrastructure platforms.

* Eligible to obtain required Canadian federal security clearance.

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Preferred Experience

Experience with several of the following would be valuable:

* VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x

* VCF Automation

* VCF Operations

* VKS / VMware Supervisor

* Cluster API

* Argo CD or Flux

* GitLab CI/CD

* Ansible

* OpenTelemetry

* Prometheus / Grafana / Loki

* Cilium / Calico / Antrea / Multus

* OPA Gatekeeper / Kyverno

* Harbor

* HashiCorp Vault

* Velero

* cert-manager

* VMware Avi

* NSX

* vSAN

* S3-compatible object storage

* PostgreSQL or Database-as-a-Service

* NVIDIA GPU Operator / vGPU

* Kubernetes multi-tenancy

* Kubernetes-as-a-Service platforms

* Private AI infrastructure

* Regulated or government environments

Certifications such as CKA, CKS, VMware VCP/VCAP/VCF, Terraform Associate or equivalent are beneficial but not required.

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SRE Mindset

We are looking for engineers who do more than restore service.

When something breaks, the expectation is to:

detect it → understand it → restore it → identify the root cause → automate or engineer the failure out → improve monitoring → document it → ensure someone else can support it.

The successful candidate should continuously ask:

“Can this be automated, made observable, made repeatable, and made more resilient?”

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Success Within the First 6–12 Months

Successful engineers will:

* Independently operate production VCF and Kubernetes services without routine dependency on Architecture.

* Build and maintain Terraform and Helm-based deployment workflows.

* Establish or improve Git-based and CI/CD-driven platform lifecycle processes.

* Improve Prometheus/Grafana visibility across infrastructure, Kubernetes and platform services.

* Reduce noisy alerts and improve actionable monitoring.

* Automate repetitive operational procedures.

* Independently troubleshoot incidents across multiple platform layers.

* Lead upgrades, migrations, backup and recovery procedures.

* Assume operational ownership of services initially introduced by Architecture.

* Cross-train sufficiently that either Cloud Platform/SRE engineer can cover critical services.

* Contribute to both VMware-based and open-source Kubernetes/KaaS platforms.

* Reduce the number of operational issues requiring architectural escalation.

Pay: $1,000.00-$100,000.00 per year

Education:

• Bachelor's Degree (preferred)

Experience:

• Kubernetes Engineering and Cloud Infrastructure: 5 years (preferred)

Licence/Certification:

• CKA, CKS, VMware VCP/VCAP/VCF, Terraform Associate (preferred)

Work Location: Remote