Principal Architect, Platform Architecture - FreeWheel

Comcast • Reston, VA

2d

About The Position

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, provides advertising platforms for publishers, advertisers, and media buyers across screens, data types, and sales channels. Its Enterprise Architecture team partners with Engineering to turn 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 foundational technologies used to build, deploy, operate, and secure FreeWheel applications. Reporting to the Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture - Platform & Infrastructure, this role develops platform architecture roadmaps, reference architectures, standards, and technical guidance to improve reliability, scalability, security, developer productivity, and cost efficiency. It also connects technology spending to architecture by analyzing service consumption and efficiency and evaluating alternatives for their effect on FreeWheel’s cost structure.

The architect helps shape cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platforms, developer tooling, observability, databases, CI/CD, secrets management, and other shared platform capabilities, enabling Platform Engineering teams to deliver consistently and quickly. The role balances platform standardization with product-team flexibility, guides complex technology decisions, leads architecture reviews, and helps teams connect architecture and platform adoption to total cost of ownership. It also contributes to the maturity of the Enterprise Architecture practice and mentors architects and engineers.

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 is preferred; applicants with some combination of coursework and experience, or extensive related professional experience, may also be considered.
• 15 years or more of relevant work experience is listed.

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 on platform and infrastructure technology decisions.
• Develop Platform Architecture Roadmaps, Reference Architectures, standards, and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs).
• 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 the design and evolution of scalable, secure, reliable, operable, and cost-efficient platform capabilities.
• Define platform guardrails, paved roads, reusable patterns, and golden paths to improve developer productivity and reduce unnecessary technology variation.
• Apply FinOps principles to architecture decisions by analyzing cloud and other vended technology costs, correlating engineering spend with services and architectural patterns, assessing utilization, and identifying cost drivers.
• Evaluate platform and architecture alternatives for technical fit, operational impact, and expected 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 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 practices for AI and automation in engineering workflows, developer experience, platform operations, and architecture practices.
• Lead technical design discussions and clarify decisions through ADRs, reference architectures, standards, and migration plans.
• Balance near-term engineering needs with long-term modernization and platform sustainability, making tradeoffs explicit and recommendations actionable.
• Contribute to improvements in reliability, scalability, security, developer productivity, and cost efficiency.
• Mentor architects and engineers and contribute to the continued maturity of the Enterprise Architecture practice.
• Understand and apply the company’s Operating Principles; put customers first, learn and advocate for its technology, collaborate as a team, participate in the Net Promoter System, drive results and growth, promote inclusion and diversity, and act responsibly toward colleagues, customers, investors, and communities.

Benefits

• Comcast provides an array of benefits for eligible employees, with options and guidance intended to support employees physically, financially, and emotionally. Details are available in the compensation and benefits summary on the careers site.
• Most non-sales positions are eligible for a bonus.

What This Job Offers

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