Principal CLoud Engineer

Role: Principal Cloud Engineer

Location: Remote

Contract 

• We are seeking a Principal Cloud Engineer who thrives at the intersection of cloud architecture, platform engineering, and delivery excellence.
• This is a high-impact, design-centric role responsible for shaping cloud strategy and producing implementation-ready designs that teams can execute confidently.
• You will lead the design of scalable, secure, reliable systems—and you will remain close to the code and the infrastructure to ensure designs are practical, automatable, and operable.
• You’ll partner with Architecture, Security, DevOps, SRE, Data, and Application teams to deliver well-architected solutions across compute, networking, identity, data, integration, observability,
• resiliency, and cost optimization.
• Design is not just diagrams here.
• We expect you to establish patterns, document decisions
• (ADRs), validate designs through prototypes, and drive adoption through reference implementations and guardrails.

 

Required Qualifications (Must Have)

• 10+ years in software/platform engineering with significant cloud architecture ownership at scale. 
• Proven experience leading design for complex cloud systems (not just participating). 
• Demonstrated hands-on experience building and operating cloud workloads: 
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform strongly preferred; CloudFormation/Bicep acceptable) 
• CI/CD and release automation (GitHub Actions/Azure DevOps/Jenkins/etc.) 
• Containers and orchestration (Kubernetes/EKS/AKS/GKE; or equivalent) 
• Strong cloud fundamentals across: 
• Identity and access management (IAM, RBAC, OAuth/OIDC, least privilege) 
• Networking (VPC/VNet, routing, peering, private endpoints, DNS, zero trust patterns) 
• Security (encryption, key management, secrets, threat modeling, posture management) 
• Reliability (HA, DR, multi-zone, multi-region strategies) 
• Observability (structured logging, distributed tracing, metrics, SLOs) 
• Experience with architecture artifacts and methodologies: 
• ADRs, reference architectures, patterns, and well-architected reviews 
• Ability to communicate design tradeoffs clearly to technical + executive audiences 

Preferred Qualifications (Nice to Have)

• Multi-cloud design experience (Azure/AWS/Google Cloud Platform) or hybrid cloud design (on-prem + cloud). 
• Strong integration architecture background: 
• API management, event streaming, messaging, service mesh, integration platforms 
• Data platform knowledge: 
• Data lakes/lake houses, data sharing patterns, streaming vs batch, governance 
• Policy-as-code tooling (OPA/Gatekeeper, Azure Policy, AWS SCPs; etc.). 
• FinOps practices and cloud cost optimization leadership. 
• Certifications (helpful but not required): 
• AWS Solutions Architect Professional / Azure Solutions Architect Expert / Google Cloud Platform PCA 
• Kubernetes (CKA/CKAD), Security (CCSP), etc.

What You’ll Do (Core Responsibilities)

1) Lead cloud solution design (primary focus)

•Own architecture and detailed design for complex cloud initiatives (greenfield + modernization). 

•Create implementation-ready designs: 

• Logical + physical architectures 
• Network and identity models 
• Security controls and threat analysis 
• Availability, DR, and scaling strategies 
• Data flow and integration patterns 
• Observability and operational runbooks 
• Produce clear and actionable artifacts, such as: 
• Architecture decision records (ADRs) 
• Reference architectures and “golden paths”   
• Patterns catalog (e.g., event-driven, API-first, data share, batch/stream) 
• Standards and guardrails for teams 

2) Validate designs with practical engineering

• Build prototypes / spike solutions to de-risk complex designs (e.g., networking, IAM, performance, data movement). 
• Create reference implementations (IaC, CI/CD templates, policy as code, sample services). 
• Provide technical leadership during delivery: unblock teams, review PRs, guide implementation choices, and ensure design fidelity. 

3) Establish secure, compliant, well-governed cloud platforms

• Define a secure-by-default posture: identity, encryption, secrets, network isolation, logging, vulnerability management. 
• Implement governance using native cloud capabilities and automation (policies, blueprints, landing zones, guardrails). 
• Partner with security and risk teams to ensure controls are built-in, not bolted-on. 

4) Engineer for reliability and operability (SRE mindset)

• Design for resilience: HA patterns, DR strategies, chaos/testing approaches, graceful degradation. 
• Create observability standards: logs/metrics/traces, SLOs/SLIs, alerting, incident response workflows. 
• Drive operational readiness: runbooks, on-call enablement, error budgets, postmortems. 

5) Optimize cost and performance (FinOps + pragmatism)

• Design cost-aware architectures and continuous optimization practices: right-sizing, storage tiers, reserved capacity, autoscaling. 
• Provide guidance for performance testing, capacity planning, and scaling strategies. 

6) Mentor and elevate engineering practices

• Raise the bar for design quality and engineering rigor across teams. 
• Lead architecture reviews and design sessions; coach engineers on tradeoffs and patterns. 
• Influence without authority—build alignment across stakeholders. 

7) Lead vendor partner selection and engagement

• Identify, evaluate, and select cloud technology vendors and partners to support strategic initiatives.
• Assess vendor solutions for technical fit, security, compliance, cost, and operational impact.
• Drive RFP/RFI processes, coordinate technical due diligence, and negotiate terms with vendors.
• Establish ongoing relationships with key partners, ensuring alignment with architecture standards and delivery goals.