Intellectual
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Platform Engineering

Kubernetes

Container orchestration for enterprise application platforms — AKS, EKS, GKE, OpenShift.

Delivery depth

Production Kubernetes delivery across all major managed platforms for regulated industry, government, and enterprise clients

OVERVIEW

Why Kubernetes, where it fits.

Kubernetes underpins most Intellectual application platforms once they outgrow single-VM hosting. We design, deliver, and operate Kubernetes estates across Azure (AKS), AWS (EKS), Google Cloud (GKE), and Red Hat OpenShift — for application teams that need a paved road rather than a console to operate.

Our Kubernetes opinion is pragmatic. Most enterprises don't need to build a custom platform abstraction. They need a well-designed managed cluster, sensible defaults, namespace and RBAC governance, GitOps deployment, baked-in observability, and a runbook the operations team can actually run. We design for that.

Common pitfalls we routinely fix: clusters running too many shared services and becoming noisy-neighbour environments, ad-hoc Helm releases without GitOps, observability bolted on instead of designed in, and identity / secret management deferred until the first audit.

HOW WE USE IT

Delivery patterns we apply.

The engagement patterns Intellectual repeatedly delivers on Kubernetes, drawn from real programmes.

Fig TS.KUB.AKubernetes — Delivery Patterns
[KUB.1]

Managed cluster architecture

AKS, EKS, GKE, or OpenShift cluster design — node-pool topology, networking model (CNI, ingress, service mesh decision), upgrade strategy, and the multi-environment topology that aligns with the SDLC.
[KUB.2]

GitOps delivery (ArgoCD, Flux)

ArgoCD or Flux-based deployment topology, Helm chart hierarchy, environment promotion, secret integration (External Secrets Operator, Vault), and the operational model for application teams.
[KUB.3]

Service mesh and traffic

Istio, Linkerd, or AWS App Mesh when the workload mix justifies it. mTLS, traffic shifting, retry / circuit-breaker policy, and the observability story that comes with the mesh.
[KUB.4]

Observability and security

Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry, Datadog, or the cloud-native equivalent. Pod-security policy, OPA Gatekeeper / Kyverno, image scanning (Trivy, Snyk), and runtime defence (Falco, AKS Defender).
[KUB.5]

Operational handover

Runbooks for upgrade, incident triage, scaling events, and cost optimisation. Training and capability transfer to the receiving platform team so the cluster outlives the engagement.

CAPABILITIES

What we deliver on.

AKS / EKS / GKE / OpenShift
Helm + Kustomize
ArgoCD + Flux (GitOps)
Istio / Linkerd
Prometheus + Grafana + OpenTelemetry
External Secrets Operator + Vault
OPA Gatekeeper + Kyverno
KEDA + cluster autoscaler

Frequently paired with

TerraformGitHub ActionsAzure DevOpsHashiCorp VaultDatadog

WHERE IT SHOWS UP

Services and programmes that draw on this technology.

Delivery enquiry

Bring a Kubernetes programme.

Architecture audit, new delivery, modernisation, or in-flight rescue — Intellectual engages directly on Kubernetes programmes with senior practitioners.