Cloud Architect, Senior Staff

Qualcomm•San Diego, CA

2d•$154,000 - $231,000•Onsite

About The Position

Qualcomm IT is seeking a Sr. Staff Cloud Architect to own the strategy, architecture, and execution of our GitOps-driven platform engineering capabilities. You will serve as a technical authority and organizational multiplier, setting the direction for our EKS platform today while building the foundation for future multi-cloud expansion. This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role for an IT architect who operates at the intersection of deep technical expertise and broad organizational leadership. This role requires full-time onsite work in San Diego, CA (5 days per week).

Requirements

10+ years of IT-related experience with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Applied Mathematics, or Engineering OR 14+ years without, with clear progression from technical execution to organizational technical leadership
5+ years operating Kubernetes at enterprise scale; deep EKS expertise required including multi-tenant architecture and cluster lifecycle ownership
Advanced Terraform expertise including module strategy, state management, and multi-environment governance
Strong CI/CD fundamentals using GitHub Actions or similar experience to build pipelines integrating building, linting, testing, DevSecOps, and Argo CD integration
Advanced AWS expertise across networking, IAM, and the EKS ecosystem in complex enterprise environments
Proven track record driving cross-organizational technical strategy and influencing senior stakeholders without direct authority
Strong Linux and distributed systems troubleshooting skills across Kubernetes, networking, and AWS
Experience with Helm/Kustomize, Kubernetes networking fundamentals, and Cilium
Clear written and verbal communication skills across both engineering and executive audiences
Platform product thinking, treating developer experience as a product with measurable outcomes

Nice To Haves

Kubernetes certifications (CKA/CKAD/CKS) and/or AWS Solutions Architect Professional / DevOps Engineer Professional
Experience with Karpenter cost optimization, Kyverno policy-at-scale, and Crossplane concepts
Demonstrated success building self-service "paved road" platform capabilities at scale

Responsibilities

Platform Strategy & Architecture: Define and drive the multi-year platform roadmap across EKS maturation and multi-cloud expansion; establish scalable platform patterns for multi-tenant environments including cluster lifecycle, upgrade strategies, and operational readiness; co-own architectural governance as a peer to others in IT.
Infrastructure as Code: Own the Terraform platform strategy across module design, state management, multi-environment patterns, and IaC governance; establish reference implementations and guardrails that enable distributed engineering teams to deliver infrastructure consistently and safely at scale.
Kubernetes Platform Engineering (EKS): Own end-to-end cluster provisioning and lifecycle management including autoscaling with Karpenter, add-on lifecycle management, and cluster upgrade and rollout strategies; establish organizational standards for cluster operations that scale across multiple teams and environments.
GitOps & CI/CD Operating Model: Establish and own the enterprise GitOps operating model using Argo CD as the primary continuous delivery platform; define multi-environment promotion strategies, deployment guardrails, and auditable delivery pipelines; extend GitOps standards across multiple application and platform teams using GitHub Actions for CI/CD orchestration.
Reliability, Observability & Cost: Own platform reliability and cost efficiency strategy; drive observability standards using Datadog and Prometheus/Grafana including dashboards, alerting, and SLO frameworks that measurably improve operational outcomes.
Security & Policy: Define secure-by-default platform patterns and own policy enforcement using Kyverno and Cilium; serve as the technical authority partnering with security stakeholders on controls, exceptions, and governance.
Organizational Leadership & Communication: Communicate platform strategy, investment rationale, and operational health to senior IT leadership; represent platform engineering in architecture reviews and cross-organizational forums; build alignment across platform, security, and application teams without direct authority.
Technology Evaluation & Innovation: Lead structured build vs. buy assessments and proactively evaluate emerging platform technologies across the CNCF landscape; ensure the platform strategy remains forward-looking through disciplined evaluation of open-source projects, vendor capabilities, and multi-cloud control plane developments.
Technical Talent Development: Mentor senior and staff engineers; shape hiring bar standards; establish communities of practice that raise the platform engineering capability across the Qualcomm enterprise.
Operational Excellence: Own the on-call model, runbook standards, and incident response practices; lead high-severity incident resolution and long-term corrective action planning. On-call participation is required, including potential 24/7 coverage.