Pick 99 -- Kubernetes Engineer

When I first came across this job opening, I thought I had stumbled into the Want Ads for a foreign country. I had worked in a software engineering environment for many years. I had a nodding acquaintance with all the major engineering processes. This one drew a blank.

 We're looking for experienced Kubernetes engineers to help us build and maintain our managed TimescaleDB cloud services. You will have the opportunity to work with a close-knit team, building and maintaining the infrastructure that powers our platform. Your work will be instrumental in developing our Kubernetes-based clusters and infrastructure. You will interact with the Kubernetes API and codebase to build controllers and operators that power our platform. Additionally, you will work closely with and further develop our infrastructure tooling to ensure the health, stability, and maintainability of our Kubernetes cluster. 

 So I did what any knowledge worker [writer} does these days: I asked Alexa, my trusted research assistant, to get me up to speed. Here is what she found out:

Kubernetes is a container management technology developed in the Google lab to manage containerized applications in different kinds of environments such as physical, virtual, and cloud infrastructure. It is an open source system which helps in creating and managing containerization of application.

Kubernetes - Cluster Architecture

But here is the part that linked my prior experience with this new data management technology. 

Highly Desired:  Experience deploying, operating, and using major production-level databases. Huge bonus points for PostgreSQL and/or TimescaleDB!

 I had worked with several large scale databases over the years. They all do basically the same thing; they manage your data. Without them your knowledge base would begin to malfunction like a person in the final stages of dementia. Once that happens there is no cure and few effective treatments. In some cases it will be necessary to rebuild your database from scratch. So whatever Kubernetes does, it must be essential to avoid database dementia. Both Siri and Alexa agree with me on this point. 

So now you know.