Infrastructure and Operations Principal Architect, ITD
About The Position
Brookhaven National Laboratory is seeking a multidisciplinary technical leader to serve as the Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) Principal Architect within the Information Technology Division (ITD). Reporting to the ITD I&O department manager, this individual contributor provides technical leadership for infrastructure and services that enable the Laboratory’s operations and scientific mission. The Principal Architect establishes standards and roadmaps, guides complex cross-functional initiatives, and advises IT and Laboratory leaders on architecture, risk, and technology investments. The role spans networks, compute, storage, cloud, identity, endpoint platforms, monitoring, and service resilience in a hybrid on-premises and cloud environment. Using hands-on experience operating production services, the Principal Architect helps shape strategic roadmaps, advances infrastructure-as-code practices, and raises engineering maturity across teams. As a member of the ITD Architect Council, the architect helps set technical direction for major IT investments and standards. The Principal Architect supports the Laboratory’s evolving AI initiatives by partnering with application, data, and AI teams to deliver secure, scalable, and reusable platform capabilities for traditional and AI-driven workloads. The position calls for a collaborative problem-solver who can mentor architects and senior engineers, challenge existing approaches, and lead the transformation of the Laboratory’s infrastructure platforms over the next several years.
Requirements
- Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, engineering, or a related discipline, or an equivalent combination of education, certifications, and relevant experience.
- At least 10 years of progressively increasing responsibility in infrastructure and operations, with demonstrated breadth across enterprise architecture, cloud, DevOps and automation, and Windows and Linux platform engineering.
- Deep expertise in one or more infrastructure disciplines and broad working knowledge across multiple I&O technologies.
- Demonstrated experience designing or guiding complex infrastructure solutions with cross-platform dependencies and significant operational or implementation risk.
- Ability to independently define and analyze unfamiliar technical problems, evaluate alternatives, and make sound recommendations that account for technical and economic feasibility.
- Broad and deep enterprise infrastructure experience, including networking, identity and access management (IAM), virtualization, cybersecurity, and systems integration.
- Experience in hybrid-cloud and complex environments, with strong analytical and troubleshooting abilities.
- Ability to rapidly retool on emerging technologies; curiosity, adaptability, and interest in emerging cloud and AI technologies.
- Business acumen and ability to balance technical excellence, security, operational reliability, and cost optimization.
- Excellent written, verbal, and presentation skills, including ability to communicate technical concepts to engineers, architects, leadership, and business stakeholders.
- Ability to influence executives, business leaders, architects, engineering teams, and strategic partners as a trusted technical leader.
- Experience and comfort mentoring architects and senior engineers and serving as a technical leader to raise the bar within infrastructure engineering teams.
- Must submit both a resume and cover letter for consideration.
- Must be able to obtain and maintain a DOE Uncleared Personal Identity Verification (UPIV) credential as a condition of employment.
Nice To Haves
- 15 or more years of relevant experience.
- Master’s degree.
- Experience supporting research, scientific computing, higher education, or Department of Energy environments.
- Experience with FinOps practices, cloud cost governance, and subscription management.
- Familiarity with security and compliance frameworks such as NIST, ISO 27001, SOC 2, or FedRAMP.
Responsibilities
- Develop and maintain infrastructure architectures, technical standards, reference designs, and multiyear roadmaps, and serve on the ITD Architect Council.
- Lead architectural planning for initiatives spanning multiple platforms, vendors, teams, or customer groups, addressing dependencies, integration, operational risks, and long-term support.
- Evaluate current and emerging technologies for technical fit, cost, security, reliability, and operational impact; recommend investments and modernization priorities to senior leadership.
- Advise on complex projects and unresolved infrastructure issues, working with engineers, cybersecurity, application teams, project leaders, and stakeholders to turn requirements into workable designs.
- Review and approve solution architectures for major initiatives, guiding teams through tradeoffs, implementation plans, and exceptions to enterprise standards.
- Guide improvements in capacity planning, performance, configuration management, observability, recoverability, and service resilience.
- Lead technical vendor evaluations and assess proposals against Laboratory requirements.
- Produce architecture diagrams, decision records, standards, and strategic reports; communicate recommendations to technical staff, customers, and senior management.
- Mentor I&O architects and promote sound engineering and architectural practices.
- Partner with application, data, and AI teams to deliver secure, scalable, reusable platform capabilities for traditional and AI-driven workloads.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
