Principal Architect, Platform Architecture - FreeWheel
About The Position
FreeWheel’s Enterprise Architecture team partners with Engineering to translate technology strategy, platform requirements, and operational needs into scalable platform designs and technical direction. The Principal Enterprise Architect, Platform & Infrastructure is a senior technical leader focused on the foundational technologies used to build, deploy, operate, and secure FreeWheel applications. The role reports to the Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture - Platform & Infrastructure. The architect develops Platform Architecture Roadmaps, Reference Architectures, standards, and technology guidance to improve reliability, scalability, security, developer productivity, and cost efficiency. The role shapes the evolution of cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platforms, developer tooling, observability, databases, CI/CD, secrets management, and other shared platform capabilities, while enabling Platform Engineering teams to execute consistently and quickly. It also connects technology spending to architecture by analyzing service consumption and efficiency and evaluating alternatives for their impact on FreeWheel’s cost structure.
Requirements
- 10+ years in software engineering, infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, cloud architecture, or enterprise architecture roles.
- Deep experience with Kubernetes, cloud-native architecture, CI/CD, observability, databases, networking, infrastructure automation, and security-by-design.
- Experience designing and evolving large-scale cloud, hybrid-cloud, or datacenter-based platforms.
- Strong understanding of resiliency engineering, SLOs, observability, platform security, identity, and secrets management.
- Experience evaluating build-versus-buy decisions and creating architecture roadmaps, standards, and reference architectures.
- Experience applying FinOps principles to architecture and platform strategy, including cloud cost analysis, service utilization assessment, workload optimization, technology cost modeling, and total cost of ownership analysis.
- Ability to correlate cloud spending with services, architectural patterns, and platform usage; identify inefficiencies; and evaluate alternatives based on their impact on cost structure.
- Ability to communicate effectively with engineers, architects, engineering managers, and senior technology leaders.
- Experience leading architecture reviews and turning ambiguous technical challenges into clear recommendations and execution plans.
- Experience in large-scale distributed environments such as AdTech, FinTech, Telecom, media technology, SaaS, or marketplace platforms.
- Bachelor’s degree preferred; applicants with a combination of coursework and experience or extensive related professional experience may also be considered.
Nice To Haves
- Experience with platform engineering, internal developer platforms, AI-enabled engineering tooling, or developer productivity initiatives.
Responsibilities
- Serve as a senior architecture partner to Platform Engineering and Engineering teams, providing guidance on platform and infrastructure technology decisions.
- Develop Platform Architecture Roadmaps, Reference Architectures, standards, and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for FreeWheel’s engineering ecosystem.
- Guide architectural direction for cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platforms, serverless technologies, databases, networking, observability, CI/CD, developer tooling, secrets management, and shared engineering services.
- Partner with Platform Engineering on platform design and evolution, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, reliable, operable, and cost-efficient.
- Define platform guardrails, paved roads, reusable patterns, and golden paths that improve developer productivity and reduce unnecessary technology variation.
- Apply FinOps principles by analyzing cloud and other vended technology costs, correlating Engineering spend with services and architectural patterns, assessing utilization efficiency, and identifying material cost drivers.
- Evaluate architecture and platform alternatives based on technical fit, operational impact, and expected effect on total cost of ownership.
- Evaluate build, buy, extend, customize, and deprecate options for infrastructure and platform technologies.
- Lead architecture reviews and provide design guidance for major platform initiatives and modernization efforts.
- Develop strategies and guidelines for cloud governance, platform standardization, technology lifecycle management, infrastructure modernization, and systems deprecation.
- Shape multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud architecture approaches, workload placement guidance, and migration strategies.
- Define architecture patterns for observability, resilience, secrets management, identity integration, platform APIs, automation, and operational excellence.
- Help shape strategy, toolsets, and standard practices for using AI and automation in engineering workflows, developer experience, platform operations, and architecture practices.
- Balance platform standardization with product-team flexibility and near-term engineering needs with long-term modernization and platform sustainability.
- Lead technical design discussions, make tradeoffs clear, and turn ambiguous technical challenges into actionable recommendations and execution plans.
- Contribute to measurable improvements in reliability, scalability, security, developer productivity, and cost efficiency.
- Mentor architects and engineers and contribute to the maturity of the Enterprise Architecture practice.
- Understand and follow Comcast’s Operating Principles; prioritize customer experience, teamwork, results, feedback, inclusion and diversity, and doing what is right for customers, investors, colleagues, and communities.
Benefits
- Comcast provides benefits to eligible employees, with options and support intended to help employees physically, financially, and emotionally.
- Most non-sales positions are eligible for a bonus.
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What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Principal
