Requirements
- Production Rust experience — you are comfortable owning a large, multi-crate Rust workspace, navigating async Rust, and reasoning about lifetimes and ownership in a long-running reconciliation loop context.
- Deep Kubernetes internals — you understand how controllers, reconciliation loops, watches, owner references, finalizers, admission webhooks, and status subresources actually work; you've debugged controllers in production, not just written YAML against them.
- Kubernetes operator development — hands-on experience building or maintaining a real Kubernetes operator using controller-runtime, kube-runtime, kubebuilder, or an equivalent framework; you understand the operational difference between a true reconciliation controller and a Helm wrapper.
- Kubernetes networking fluency — you have worked with Service types, Ingress, IngressClass, and at least one major ingress controller at the configuration level; you can reason about the trade-offs between Ingress, LoadBalancer, and Gateway API as exposure patterns.
- StatefulSet management in production — you understand rolling updates, PVC lifecycle, pod disruption budgets, and the operational implications of topology changes in stateful systems; you've debugged a stuck StatefulSet in a real cluster.
- Observability integration — you have instrumented Kubernetes controllers with Prometheus metrics, have opinions about what good operator telemetry looks like, and understand how ServiceMonitor CRDs and Prometheus Operator fit together.
- Enterprise customer orientation — you've built infrastructure or tooling subject to enterprise security reviews, compliance requirements, and sophisticated operational expectations; you understand what 'enterprise-grade' means in practice, not just in principle.
Nice to Have
- Experience with kube-runtime specifically (Rust's Kubernetes controller framework)
- Familiarity with Strimzi (Kafka operator) — the SMBP operator integrates with Strimzi for transaction log management
- Cert-manager integration experience (Certificate, Issuer, ClusterIssuer resources and ACME lifecycle)
- Property-based or generative testing experience, particularly proptest or similar frameworks in a Rust context
- OLM and OpenShift operator certification experience — OperatorHub listing, bundle format, ClusterServiceVersion authoring
- Kubernetes Gateway API experience (HTTPRoute, GRPCRoute, TCPRoute) as an implementer or operator
- Supply chain security tooling: Cosign, SBOM generation (Syft, SPDX), container image signing workflows
- Experience with distributed systems concepts relevant to CRDT-based sync, eventually consistent data stores, or peer-to-peer replication
- Open source contributions to cloud-native infrastructure, Kubernetes ecosystem projects, or Rust systems tooling
