Strong, hands-on expertise leveraging Kubernetes natively - deep fluency with core Kubernetes APIs and objects, cluster architecture, workload management, networking, custom resource definitions (CRDs), operators/controllers, and troubleshooting, without dependence on managed abstraction layers. Architect, configure, and maintain deployments on the organization's internal Kubernetes platform, leveraging native Kubernetes constructs (e.g., Deployments, StatefulSets, CRDs, operators, and controllers) rather than relying on abstraction layers, and configuring Istio service mesh for traffic management, security, and observability.