[Hiring] Principal Edge Platform Engineer @Bigbear.ai

Role Description

The Principal Edge Platform Engineer is responsible for developing, hardening, and sustaining Ask Sage’s edge solution that enables customers to run the Ask Sage platform (or approved subsets of capabilities) in on-premises and disconnected/limited-connectivity environments. You will design the reference architecture, automate hardware and software provisioning, and operationalize a secure, supportable on-prem Kubernetes-based platform that our Cloud/Kubernetes engineers and application teams can rely on.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, build, and maintain Ask Sage’s edge/on-prem platform reference architecture to run Kubernetes-hosted applications reliably in customer environments (including low-bandwidth and intermittently connected sites).
• Develop and maintain automated provisioning pipelines for edge hardware (bare metal and/or hypervisor-based), including bootstrapping, imaging, configuration management, and repeatable deployment workflows.
• Own virtualization strategy and implementation for edge installations (e.g., KVM/QEMU, Nutanix, or equivalent), including templates, networking, storage, and lifecycle management.
• Deploy, configure, secure, and operate on-prem Kubernetes distributions appropriate for edge (e.g., k3s and/or upstream Kubernetes), including cluster upgrades, add-ons, ingress, DNS, and storage integrations.
• Package and deliver on-prem Kubernetes applications and supporting services (registries, monitoring/logging, certificate management, backups, secrets management), ensuring consistent deployment patterns and upgrade paths.
• Build and maintain Infrastructure-as-Code / automation (Ansible, Terraform where applicable, scripting) to reduce manual intervention and increase deployment consistency.
• Develop operational runbooks, installation guides, maintenance procedures, and troubleshooting playbooks suitable for customer admins and internal support teams.
• Provide 2nd and 3rd level support for edge deployments, including incident response, root-cause analysis, corrective actions, and preventive improvements.
• Serve as the technical escalation point for customer issues relating to edge hardware, virtualization, Kubernetes, networking, storage, and application lifecycle.
• Establish observability and health monitoring standards for edge deployments and define alert thresholds, remote support mechanisms, and maintenance windows.
• Partner with Security and Cloud/Kubernetes engineering to ensure edge deployments align with compliance requirements and secure-by-default patterns (hardening, least privilege, audit logging, vulnerability remediation).
• Coordinate with vendors and customer IT teams for interoperability testing, facility requirements (power/cooling/rack), network/security approvals, and delivery timelines.
• Travel to customer sites as required for installs, upgrades, break/fix escalations, and operational readiness validation.

Qualifications

• Minimum of 7 years of experience in infrastructure/platform engineering, including significant hands-on work in on-prem/edge environments.
• Clearance: Ability to obtain a TS/SCI.
• Demonstrated experience automating hardware provisioning and system deployment (PXE/iPXE, imaging, unattended installs, config management, immutable/golden images).
• Strong experience with virtualization and on-prem platform operations (KVM/QEMU, Nutanix, VMware, Hyper-V, or equivalent), including virtual networking and storage concepts.
• Deep practical experience deploying and administering Kubernetes in non-cloud environments (on-prem), including k3s and/or upstream Kubernetes, and the supporting ecosystem (CNI/CSI/Ingress/DNS).
• Strong Linux administration skills and networking fundamentals (routing, firewalling, VLANs, DNS, TLS/certificates).
• Proficiency with automation/scripting (Bash, Python, Go preferred) and Infrastructure-as-Code practices (Ansible/Terraform).
• Experience building supportable products: documentation discipline, reproducible installs, upgrade strategies, and operational playbooks.
• Comfortable in customer-facing environments and able to communicate clearly with technical and leadership stakeholders.
• Ability to lift/handle common IT equipment and work in data center/field environments as needed (reasonable accommodations where applicable).
• Experience with edge-oriented Kubernetes operations and constrained environments (resource-limited hardware, intermittent connectivity).
• Familiarity with hybrid architectures that integrate on-prem platforms with cloud control planes/services.
• Experience building “appliance-like” deployments (preconfigured hardware + software stack) and managing lifecycle updates.
• Relevant certifications preferred (one or more): CKA/CKS, RHCSA/RHCE, Security+, VMware VCP, cloud architect certifications.

What we'd like you to have

• Experience with edge-oriented Kubernetes operations and constrained environments (resource-limited hardware, intermittent connectivity).
• Familiarity with hybrid architectures that integrate on-prem platforms with cloud control planes/services.
• Experience building “appliance-like” deployments (preconfigured hardware + software stack) and managing lifecycle updates.
• Relevant certifications preferred (one or more): CKA/CKS, RHCSA/RHCE, Security+, VMware VCP, cloud architect certifications.