Job description

Senior OpenShift Engineer – Federal Government

- 12-month contract with extension potential
- Must be an Australian Citizen with a current Negative Vetting Level 1 Security Clearance (Mandatory)
- Location: VIC, ACT, QLD (Hybrid)

Job Details

Our Federal Government client is seeking an experienced Senior OpenShift Engineer to support the administration, maintenance and optimisation of enterprise on-premises Red Hat OpenShift and Kubernetes platforms. This hands-on technical role focuses on ensuring platform availability, security, performance, scalability and operational resilience within a complex government environment.
Working closely with infrastructure, security, application and architecture teams, you will lead platform administration, lifecycle management, upgrades, troubleshooting and automation initiatives. You will leverage technologies such as Ansible, Helm, Terraform, Python, GitOps and CI/CD pipelines to improve operational efficiency and service reliability. The role also involves contributing to security and compliance requirements, mentoring junior engineers, managing complex technical changes and maintaining operational documentation in line with government standards.

Key Duties and Responsibilities

- Administer, configure and maintain on-premises Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Kubernetes clusters.
- Perform cluster installation, upgrades, patching, configuration changes, maintenance and technology refresh activities.
- Monitor platform health, availability, capacity and performance, proactively identifying and resolving operational issues.
- Troubleshoot complex OpenShift, Kubernetes and infrastructure issues involving networking, storage, compute, DNS, load balancing, certificates and identity services.
- Manage OpenShift operators, nodes, workloads, platform policies and supporting services.
- Implement security controls, including authentication, authorisation, role-based access control (RBAC), network segmentation and vulnerability management.
- Develop automation and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions using Ansible, Helm, Terraform and Python where appropriate.
- Support containerised application deployments, scaling and management through CI/CD pipelines and GitOps practices.
- Collaborate with developers, infrastructure specialists,



architects and security teams to resolve incidents and deliver platform improvements.
- Plan and implement complex technical changes while following enterprise change, incident, problem and configuration management processes.
- Analyse operational data, incident trends and performance metrics to identify risks and opportunities for continuous improvement.
- Contribute to monitoring, logging, alerting, disaster recovery and platform resilience practices.
- Maintain technical documentation, operational procedures, configuration records and platform standards.
- Provide technical leadership, mentor junior engineers and communicate complex technical issues to technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Essential Requirements

- At least five years of system administration experience, including hands-on OpenShift/Kubernetes cluster administration.
- Extensive experience administering Kubernetes environments, including networking, security, storage, workloads and troubleshooting within containerised platforms.
- Demonstrated experience with enterprise OpenShift or Kubernetes cluster operations, including configuration, monitoring, upgrades, patching and lifecycle management.
- Robust understanding of supporting infrastructure components, including compute, networking, storage, load balancing, DNS, certificates and identity services.
- Experience diagnosing and resolving complex platform and infrastructure issues while maintaining availability, performance and operational stability.
- Knowledge of container security, authentication, authorisation, RBAC and secure platform configuration.
- Ability to automate operational tasks and improve platform consistency, reliability and efficiency.
- Strong analytical, problem-solving and communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical information clearly.
- Relevant tertiary qualifications or equivalent professional experience, including experience in large-scale ICT and Kubernetes environments.

Desirable Skills





- Experience working in Australian Government or other highly regulated environments.
- Knowledge of Australian Government security frameworks and standards, particularly the Information Security Manual (ISM) and Essential Eight.
- Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Administration certification or equivalent.
- Hands-on experience with Ansible, Helm, Terraform, Python, Git, GitOps, CI/CD pipelines and Infrastructure as Code.
- Experience with OpenShift operators, container registries, logging, monitoring, alerting and disaster recovery.
- Knowledge of enterprise change, incident, problem and configuration management practices.
- Experience leading technical projects, mentoring junior engineers and collaborating across multidisciplinary teams.
- Relevant Red Hat, Kubernetes or cloud-native platform certifications.

To Apply
If this sounds like the right opportunity for you, please submit an updated copy of your resume in MS Word format by clicking APPLY NOW, or contact Humaira Hashmi at [email protected] for a confidential discussion.
#SCR-Humaira-Hashmi

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DFP welcomes applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, people with diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds and people with disability. In addition, DFP will provide reasonable adjustments for individuals with disability throughout the recruitment process. If you identify as a person with disability and require adjustments to the application, recruitment, selection and/or assessment process, please advise via [email protected] or 1300 337 000 and indicate your preferred method of communication (email, phone, text) so we can keep in touch and meet your accessibility needs.

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