Director, Enterprise Architecture – Platform & Infrastructure - (Reston - Hybrid) FreeWheel

Comcast • Reston, VA

2d • Hybrid

About The Position

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, is seeking a Director, Enterprise Architecture – Platform & Infrastructure to build and lead its Platform Architecture team. The role defines the long-range architecture strategy, standards, roadmaps, and governance for infrastructure and shared platform capabilities, including cloud and datacenter infrastructure, Kubernetes and container platforms, compute, storage, networking, databases, observability, CI/CD, developer tooling, secrets management, identity integration, service connectivity, and related technologies.

The Director serves as a strategic advisor to the Executive Director of Enterprise Architecture, the CTO organization, Engineering leadership, Platform Engineering, Security, Operations, Data, and Product Architecture. The role helps shape platform modernization and investment decisions, improve engineering standardization, reduce technology fragmentation, strengthen operational resilience, and enable reusable, scalable, secure, and cost-efficient capabilities for product engineering teams.

As a people leader and architecture leader, this person builds an engaged, high-performing team; establishes clear priorities and accountability; coaches and develops architects and principal engineers; and fosters an inclusive architecture community. The Director provides actionable strategic guidance while preserving Platform Engineering’s ownership of delivery, operations, and execution. The role requires executive communication, sound judgment, and pragmatic decisions that balance modernization, operational risk, cost, and business delivery needs.

The position is listed as hybrid in Reston. The job posting also states that it may be performed in Illinois, Denver Campus, and New York City. Compensation ranges vary by location: Virginia pay is $178,798.92–$268,198.38, while the listed range for Illinois, Denver Campus, and New York City is $163,251.19–$279,859.17. The selected candidate’s base pay depends on job-related, non-discriminatory factors such as experience. Most non-sales positions are eligible for a bonus, and Comcast provides benefits to eligible employees; specific benefits are described on the company careers site.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field; equivalent practical experience may also be considered.
• At least 12 years of experience in software engineering, infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, cloud architecture, enterprise architecture, or related technology leadership roles, as stated in the experience qualifications.
• At least 5 years of people leadership experience managing architects, principal engineers, platform architects, infrastructure architects, or comparable senior technical contributors.
• Demonstrated experience defining architecture strategy and roadmaps for large-scale distributed systems, infrastructure platforms, cloud environments, or high-volume digital technology platforms.
• Deep knowledge of cloud-native architecture, Kubernetes, containers, serverless, infrastructure automation, networking, storage, databases, observability, CI/CD, developer platforms, and security-by-design practices.
• Strong understanding of hybrid infrastructure, datacenter modernization, multi-cloud strategy, workload placement, resiliency architecture, operational readiness, and platform lifecycle management.
• Experience leading migrations of large, complex workloads between hyperscalers.
• Experience establishing architecture governance, standards, review processes, exception management, reference architectures, and technology decision frameworks across multiple teams or business domains.
• Experience partnering with Platform Engineering, Infrastructure, Operations, Security, Data, Product Architecture, and senior Engineering leadership to align architecture strategy with execution realities.
• Ability to evaluate tradeoffs across reliability, scalability, performance, security, operability, cost, developer productivity, time-to-market, and organizational readiness.
• Experience with FinOps, cost-aware architecture, cloud spend governance, capacity planning, or infrastructure efficiency programs.
• Excellent executive communication, stakeholder management, conflict resolution, organizational influence, and talent development skills.
• Ability to exercise independent judgment and discretion in matters of significance.
• Relevant professional experience is listed as 10 years or more in the posting’s separate Relevant Work Experience field.

Nice To Haves

• Advanced degree or equivalent practical experience.
• Hands-on familiarity with Kubernetes managed control planes, service mesh, API gateways, secrets management, policy-as-code, infrastructure-as-code, observability platforms, automated delivery pipelines, and database platform strategy.
• Experience in AdTech, MarTech, media technology, SaaS, marketplace platforms, digital advertising, or similarly high-scale, low-latency, distributed, data-intensive environments.
• Experience supporting globally distributed engineering organizations and platforms with high availability, high throughput, and complex operational requirements.
• Experience leading or influencing platform engineering transformation, developer experience improvements, internal developer platforms, service catalog adoption, or golden path strategies.
• Experience modernizing legacy infrastructure and application platforms into more modular, cloud-native, automated, and operationally efficient environments.
• Experience with AI-enabled engineering productivity, automation, platform intelligence, or architecture governance tooling.

Responsibilities

• Lead, develop, and manage a team of Enterprise Architects responsible for platform, infrastructure, and shared engineering capability architecture.
• Define and drive the Platform & Infrastructure Architecture vision, operating model, engagement approach, standards, governance mechanisms, and strategic roadmaps.
• Advise the Executive Director of Enterprise Architecture on priorities, the Enterprise Architecture agenda, and maturation of the architecture practice.
• Partner with Platform Engineering leadership to provide strategic direction while leaving delivery, operations, and execution ownership with Platform Engineering.
• Set architectural direction for cloud and datacenter platforms, compute, Kubernetes and container orchestration, managed control planes, serverless platforms, storage, databases, networking, observability, CI/CD, developer experience, secrets management, identity integration, and internal platform services.
• Shape multi-cloud and hybrid infrastructure strategy, including workload placement, portability where appropriate, resiliency, operational readiness, cost efficiency, security, and regulatory or business constraints.
• Develop and maintain reference architectures, platform standards, target-state designs, architecture decision records, technology lifecycle recommendations, and modernization roadmaps.
• Drive platform modernization and rationalization to reduce legacy complexity, fragmentation, operational toil, duplicated capabilities, and unnecessary variance across engineering teams.
• Define paved roads and golden paths that improve developer productivity while balancing consistency, flexibility, reliability, security, and business delivery needs.
• Guide architecture for observability, logging, tracing, metrics, alerting, service health, SLO practices, reliability engineering, incident learning, and operational excellence.
• Partner with Security and Operations to incorporate secure-by-design principles, secrets management, identity, vulnerability management, policy enforcement, auditability, and production readiness into platform strategies.
• Partner with Finance, Engineering, and Platform Engineering to integrate FinOps and cost-aware architecture practices, cost transparency, usage efficiency, and informed tradeoff analysis.
• Evaluate build, buy, extend, standardize, deprecate, and retire decisions across business value, strategic optionality, architectural fit, resiliency, security, operability, risk, and total cost of ownership.
• Evaluate emerging technologies, including AI-enabled developer platforms, automation, infrastructure orchestration, and platform engineering tooling, and define pragmatic adoption strategies when they offer measurable engineering leverage.
• Partner with Product Architecture so product-aligned architectures use shared platform capabilities, standardized integration patterns, reusable infrastructure services, and clear technology guardrails.
• Coach and mentor architects and principal engineers and foster an architecture community of practice that raises technical rigor and improves decision quality.
• Facilitate technical debate, make tradeoffs explicit, document decisions, and ensure architecture guidance is actionable and communicated.
• Translate complex platform and infrastructure tradeoffs into clear business, risk, cost, and delivery implications for senior stakeholders.
• Model inclusion, collaboration, learning, transparency, and respect across Architecture, Engineering, Platform, Operations, Product, Security, and Data teams.
• Exercise independent judgment and discretion in matters of significance; maintain regular, consistent, and punctual attendance; and perform other assigned duties.
• Help meet success measures including stronger platform architecture roadmaps and partnerships, measurable improvements in cost efficiency, reliability, scalability, resiliency, operability, security, and developer productivity, broader use of standardized shared capabilities, and reduced fragmentation and operational toil.

Benefits

• Bonus eligibility for most non-sales positions.
• Comcast benefits for eligible employees; the posting refers candidates to the company careers site for the benefits summary.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Director