[Jedd]

Can second this recommendation. We're running OpenShift and Nomad clusters - the former makes my eyes bleed, and the latter I can mostly get my head around. (Note that I'm not involved in operating either of those platforms.)

You'll still get layer-upon-layer of abstraction - for example Consul for key-value and service discovery, Traefik for load balancing, Terraform to build up the service discovery rules, etc - but it feels somewhat more intentful, less boilerplate.