Harman Walsh Government Solutions LLC (HWGS) is seeking a Sr. OpenShift Virtualization Engineer to help lead one of the largest OpenShift Virtualization migrations in the federal space: a multi-year effort to move tens of thousands of virtual machines from VMware to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization for a federal government client.
You will design, build, and run production OpenShift clusters in a hub-and-spoke architecture and lead the actual VM migrations, from planning and cutover through rollback when something goes wrong. This is a hands-on engineering role. The team needs someone who has operated production OpenShift and can talk through exactly how they did it.
If your OpenShift experience comes mostly from labs, courses, or running playbooks someone else wrote, this isn't the right fit. If you have lived in production clusters, led migrations, and built your own automation, we want to talk to you.
What You'll Do
Design, deploy, and support OpenShift clusters in a hub-and-spoke architecture: global hubs, site hubs, and distributed workload clusters
Lead VMware-to-OpenShift Virtualization migrations of Windows and RHEL workloads from vSphere/ESXi 7 and 8, including wave planning, cutover, validation, and rollback
Use the Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV) and translate VMware constructs (networking, resource pools, tags) into their OpenShift and Kubernetes equivalents
Troubleshoot cutovers and rollbacks during scheduled evening and weekend maintenance windows
Own day-2 operations: cluster health, degraded ClusterOperators, node maintenance (cordon/drain), operator lifecycle, and cluster upgrades
Administer namespaces, quotas, and RBAC, and support persistent storage (PV, PVC, StorageClass) for virtual machine workloads
Deploy and integrate platform services such as Dynatrace, NetApp Trident, Splunk, Commvault, and the OpenShift Compliance Operator
Build infrastructure as code with Ansible, Git, and GitOps tooling, including playbooks and roles you write and maintain, plus Quay for image management
Integrate secrets management (HashiCorp Vault or CyberArk) into the platform
Troubleshoot bare-metal hardware issues using Cisco UCS/Intersight, Dell iDRAC, or HPE iLO
Apply and maintain STIG, CIS benchmark, and SCAP/DISA compliance across the environment
Document runbooks and mentor system administrators on the team
Required Experience
5+ years administering or engineering production Red Hat OpenShift (OpenShift Container Platform 4.x), including real day-2 experience in production environments, not lab or training environments only
Working command of core platform concepts: cluster health and troubleshooting, nodes and operators, upgrades, namespaces and RBAC, and storage fundamentals
Ansible authoring experience. You must be able to walk through a specific playbook or role you personally wrote or meaningfully modified, including what problem it solved and why you structured it that way
Deep VMware vSphere/ESXi experience, including how VM networking, storage, and resource management work
Hands-on VM migration experience (P2V, V2V, or VMware to OpenShift Virtualization), with the ability to describe a migration you led or executed in detail, including something that went wrong and how you handled it
Production RHEL administration experience
Experience with Git-based workflows and infrastructure as code
Preferred Qualifications
Hands-on OpenShift Virtualization (KubeVirt) and MTV experience in production. Training in these tools will be provided, so strong platform and migration fundamentals matter most
Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Virtualization, RHCE or RHCA, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA), and/or VCP-DCV
Multi-cluster management experience (for example, Red Hat Advanced Cluster Management)
Prior federal government or other highly regulated environment experience
Bare-metal server experience (Cisco UCS, Dell, or HPE)
Experience with Dynatrace, NetApp Trident, Commvault, Splunk, Quay, and HashiCorp Vault or CyberArk
Additional Requirements
U.S. citizenship required
Must be eligible to obtain and maintain a VA Public Trust background investigation. An active Public Trust is a plus, but candidates without one are welcome to apply, and the client will help candidates through the process while they work in non-sensitive areas
Fully remote. No relocation required
Participation in scheduled evening and weekend cutover windows
Occasional travel (roughly once every six months) may be required