Freelancing-VMware vSphere Kubernetes L3 Support Engineer

Key responsibilities

Consulting and architecture

Lead discovery workshops and assessments, and turn customer requirements into clear architectures and statements of work.

Design Kubernetes platforms (VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service, OpenShift, or equivalent) covering HA, security, networking, storage, and DR.

Define VNF-to-CNF migration strategies, including vendor CNF validation, CSAR packaging, parallel run, cutover, and rollback.

Run formal design reviews before build and sign off on quality.

Delivery leadership

Own delivery outcomes for complex engagements: scope, timelines, risk, and customer communication.

Guide Day 1 teams through deployment, configuration, integration testing, and handover.

Enforce a handover gate (runbooks, dashboards, alerting, named owner) before any workload goes live.

Day 2 operations and service design

Build and mature post-deployment operating models: tiered support (L1 to L3), severity definitions, SLAs, change and upgrade processes, and capacity management.

Act as L3 escalation point for platform, networking (CNI, Multus, SR-IOV, DPDK), and workload issues, and lead root cause analysis.

Manage vendor escalations and track fixes to closure.

Customer satisfaction and governance

Establish CSAT checkpoints and KPI reporting (response time, milestone adherence, escalations, change success).

Run weekly and monthly service reviews and drive continuous improvement from recurring incidents.

People and practice building

Mentor consultants and engineers, and set standards for runbooks, reference architectures, and automation.

Support pre-sales: scoping, effort estimation, proposals, and customer presentations.

Required qualifications

15+ years in IT infrastructure, cloud, or telecom engineering, with at least 5 years in architecture or lead consultant roles.

Deep expertise in Kubernetes (cluster design, upgrades, troubleshooting) and virtualization (VMware vSphere/NSX/vSAN or equivalent).

Hands-on experience with containerized network functions or telco workloads, including multi-interface networking and performance tuning.

Strong command of Helm, GitOps (Argo CD or Flux), CI/CD, and infrastructure as code (Terraform, Ansible).

Proven experience designing observability (metrics, logs, tracing) and defining operational KPIs.

Experience building ITIL-aligned processes: incident, problem, change, and capacity management.

Excellent communication skills, with the ability to present to both engineers and senior executives.

Experience and hands on with qualifications

VMware (VCP/VCAP/VCDX), CKA/CKS, or equivalent certifications.

Experience with ETSI NFV/MANO, 5G core, or RAN workloads.

Public cloud exposure (AWS, Azure, GCP) and hybrid architectures.

Experience in managed services or in setting up a Day 2 operations team from scratch.

Knowledge of security and compliance frameworks relevant to telecom or financial customers.

Key competencies

Clear writing: produces designs, runbooks, and reports