diff --git a/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/deploy/SparkSubmit.scala b/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/deploy/SparkSubmit.scala
index 783cf47df169..165e1f347494 100644
--- a/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/deploy/SparkSubmit.scala
+++ b/core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/deploy/SparkSubmit.scala
@@ -157,24 +157,35 @@ private[spark] class SparkSubmit extends Logging {
 
     def doRunMain(): Unit = {
       if (args.proxyUser != null) {
-        val proxyUser = UserGroupInformation.createProxyUser(args.proxyUser,
-          UserGroupInformation.getCurrentUser())
-        try {
-          proxyUser.doAs(new PrivilegedExceptionAction[Unit]() {
-            override def run(): Unit = {
-              runMain(args, uninitLog)
-            }
-          })
-        } catch {
-          case e: Exception =>
-            // Hadoop's AuthorizationException suppresses the exception's stack trace, which
-            // makes the message printed to the output by the JVM not very helpful. Instead,
-            // detect exceptions with empty stack traces here, and treat them differently.
-            if (e.getStackTrace().length == 0) {
-              error(s"ERROR: ${e.getClass().getName()}: ${e.getMessage()}")
-            } else {
-              throw e
-            }
+        // Here we are checking for client mode because when job is sumbitted in cluster
+        // deploy mode with k8s resource manager, the spark submit in the driver container
+        // is done in client mode.
+        val isKubernetesClusterModeDriver = args.master.startsWith("k8s") &&
+          args.deployMode.equals("client") &&
+          args.toSparkConf().getBoolean("spark.kubernetes.submitInDriver", false)
+        if (isKubernetesClusterModeDriver) {
+          logInfo("Running driver with proxy user. Cluster manager: Kubernetes")
+          SparkHadoopUtil.get.runAsSparkUser(() => runMain(args, uninitLog))
+        } else {
+          val proxyUser = UserGroupInformation.createProxyUser(args.proxyUser,
+            UserGroupInformation.getCurrentUser())
+          try {
+            proxyUser.doAs(new PrivilegedExceptionAction[Unit]() {
+              override def run(): Unit = {
+                runMain(args, uninitLog)
+              }
+            })
+          } catch {
+            case e: Exception =>
+              // Hadoop's AuthorizationException suppresses the exception's stack trace, which
+              // makes the message printed to the output by the JVM not very helpful. Instead,
+              // detect exceptions with empty stack traces here, and treat them differently.
+              if (e.getStackTrace().length == 0) {
+                error(s"ERROR: ${e.getClass().getName()}: ${e.getMessage()}")
+              } else {
+                throw e
+              }
+          }
         }
       } else {
         runMain(args, uninitLog)