About the job
Join Upwork ($UPWK), the leading global work marketplace that connects businesses with top-tier talent across the globe. Our platform empowers individuals from solo entrepreneurs to over 30% of Fortune 100 companies, allowing them to collaborate in innovative ways that unlock their potential.
Last year, over $3.8 billion worth of work was completed on Upwork by skilled professionals who are taking charge of their careers by pursuing projects they are passionate about.
You will be part of Upwork’s Hybrid Workforce Solutions (HWS) Team, a diverse group of professionals dedicated to supporting Upwork’s business objectives from various locations worldwide.
At Upwork, we maintain a sophisticated Service Mesh ecosystem that facilitates a decentralized application architecture. This structure enhances security, resilience, observability, and control across our applications. Our approach employs a data plane with application-level proxies for efficient communication between distributed components, complemented by a control plane for oversight. This architecture represents the next step in microservices, overcoming the limitations of traditional client library models by decoupling infrastructure from application code. Central to our Service Mesh is the Kubernetes Orchestrator, specifically Amazon EKS, with Istio serving as the foundational mesh technology.
As our Principal Kubernetes Engineer, you will spearhead the design, implementation, and optimization of our extensive Kubernetes infrastructure. You should possess deep expertise in Kubernetes and its ecosystem, with a proven track record of architecting scalable, secure, and highly available containerized solutions.
Your role will involve extensive collaboration with AWS services, particularly EKS, utilizing native tools and features to deliver cutting-edge cloud solutions. Proficiency in Istio is essential for managing service meshes, traffic routing, and advanced observability features. You should also demonstrate significant hands-on experience with ArgoCD for implementing GitOps practices that streamline CI/CD pipelines and with Helm for creating modular, reusable templates for application deployment.
This role is a blend of technical leadership and hands-on implementation, making you the go-to expert for Kubernetes and Service Mesh within the organization.
We value diversity in experience and knowledge; our platform engineering team is composed of individuals with various skill sets and mindsets, all focused on delivering efficient service delivery that significantly impacts our core product offerings.

