website: GSOC 2026 mentor proposals template

[rareddy]

Description of Changes

This initial template with GSOC 2026 information and project proposal template that Kubeflow mentors can submit their project ides. Note the deadline is February 3rd 2026.

Checklist

• You have signed off your commits
• Ensure you follow best practices from our contributing guide.

[juliusvonkohout]

Hello @rareddy
Here is a rough draft for two projects for two students 1. Helm 2. Security and scalability.

Project 1/2: Platform enhancements (1.Helm 2. Scalability, Security)

Components: as a platform level topic that wil touch all components, especially Manifests/Platform, KFP, Katib, Dashboard etc.

Mentors: @juliusvonkohout maybe also @HumairAK who also wants to switch to helm in KFP.

Contributor:

Details:

Helm:
this project will touch most components and continue the helm chart initiative started by @kunal-511 who also helped a lot with the testing infrastructure.
This will therefore also include working with maintainers of other components such as @HumairAK for the KFP helm charts, security and scalability topic or @andreyvelich for Katib helm charts. Some have already open PRs and there was a formal vote by the KSC (Kubeflow steering Committee) that we are moving forward with offering Kubeflow platform and standalone components as helm charts (CC @chasecadet) therefore it is not just the technical part, but also the coordination effort. The goal is to make minimalistic helm charts that are easy to maintain next to kustomize and only expose sensible settings relevant to most users. For the time being the rendered chart default values must replicate kustomize 1:1.

Security and scalability:
Furthermore there are still a few security and scalability topics that have to be improved. For example we can scale to roughly 1000 users/namespaces now, but many CRD controllers are written inefficiently and struggle with the reconciliation load or block the Kubernetes API server with too many requests. We should also change the Profile controller architetcture to use metacontroller as the pipelines profile controller does to have a proper plugin system via metacontroller and less maintenance. Using "Kubernetes user namespaces" for PSS baseline in the level in PSS restricted will also be an explorative task.

Here are some Ideas and references for reading and typical expected tasks.
Helm:

• Pipeline Helm Charts manifests#3237
• Helm Chart Templates For Katib katib#2553
• Helm charts (KEP 831) manifests#2730
• Fix the remaining Kustomize 5 warnings manifests#2991

Scalability and security:

• https://github.com/kubeflow/manifests?tab=readme-ov-file#architecture
• here are Kubeflow architecture and security talks listed https://de.linkedin.com/in/juliusvonkohout
• Rootless Kubeflow manifests#2528
• Enable model-registry with UI by default manifests#3318
• Update kserve/kserve manifests from v0.16.0 manifests#3290
• Fix kustomize warnings manifests#3268
• Migrate to gateway api manifests#3094
• "zero-trust" security / networking for training jobs trainer#2341
• fix: variable namespaces for networkpolicies manifests#3319
• Recurring Runs Queue Throughput Optimization pipelines#12610
• feat(kfp-kubernetes): Add securityContext support for container components (Fixes #12560) pipelines#12577
• feat(backend): add gRPC metrics to api-server (RPS/latency), optimize execution spec reporting pipelines#12010
• feat: ConfigMap-based plugin system for profile controller dashboard#177

Difficulty: 2x hard

Size: 2x 350 hours

Skills Required/Preferred:

• Kubernetes
• Kustomize
• Helm for 1.
• Go/Python for 2.
• Bash
• GitHub actions

---

@LogicalGuy77 @Griffin-Sullivan regarding the models web application mentoring.

[rareddy]

Thank you, @juliusvonkohout

[jaiakash]

Hi @rareddy as we were discussing this on last Tuesday community call, Are we planning to merge this PR to website and then maintainers/mentors have to open new issue for their specific project ideas.

Or we should add project ideas as comment here.

Thanks

[LogicalGuy77]

Hey, here is the draft for Project 3: Kserve Models Web Application

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QRThzcSuDlwg8FP1byqj1z6UfjmGbajvEx41V5J8RqA/edit?usp=sharing

Mentors: @Griffin-Sullivan and @LogicalGuy77

[andreyvelich]

/lgtm
/approve

[rareddy]

@andreyvelich can you place lgtm again?

[andreyvelich]

/lgtm
/approve

[google-oss-prow]

[APPROVALNOTIFIER] This PR is APPROVED

This pull-request has been approved by: andreyvelich

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[rareddy]

@juliusvonkohout @LogicalGuy77 @Griffin-Sullivan can you guys submit your proposals as part of this page in the format that is defined in this file. Submit each proposal as separate PR so that we can keep accepting at the end. Ignore the project numbers as we can assign at the end to avoid any conflicts between PRs

[LogicalGuy77]

@rareddy created a PR for the Models Web Application project #4286