Principal Architect- Hypervisors, Operating Systems, & Datacenter

JPMorgan Chase & Co.•Seattle, WA

2d•$204,250 - $285,000

About The Position

As a Principal Architect within JPMorganChase’s Core Infrastructure Platforms Architecture team, you will work across the hypervisor, operating system, and physical datacenter layers that underpin the firm’s private cloud platform. This senior individual-contributor role provides architectural leadership across the infrastructure stack, identifies gaps between domains, and drives solutions when ownership, alignment, or direction is unclear. You will add senior architectural capacity to private cloud platform programs and bring an end-to-end perspective to decisions across the full infrastructure stack.

Requirements

Formal training or certification in software engineering concepts and 10 or more years of applied experience.
Extensive experience in infrastructure architecture, with significant practical experience applying architectural principles in complex environments.
Deep expertise in enterprise hypervisor platforms operating at scale across multiple technologies, including scheduling, memory management, live migration, storage and network data paths, and failure modes.
Deep operating system expertise across Linux and Windows estates, including image build and release pipelines, hardening, compliance scanning, patching, vulnerability remediation, and lifecycle management.
Hands-on bare-metal infrastructure experience, including host provisioning, out-of-band management, firmware and BIOS lifecycle, Secure Boot, and hardware-backed attestation.
Good understanding of datacenter infrastructure, including power, cooling, rack design, network topology, hardware lifecycle, and the effect of physical design on fault domains and availability zones.
Strong engineering background, including the ability to write and troubleshoot production-quality code in Go or Python and work across operating systems, logs, networking, and low-level diagnostics.
Solid understanding of storage and networking technologies, including block and file storage, software-defined storage, network virtualization, and hardware offload.
Proven ability to contribute effectively in unfamiliar domains, quickly add value to complex problems, and help teams succeed without taking ownership away from them.
Experience defining and publishing requirements before technology selection, with the judgment to challenge solutions that do not meet those requirements.
Track record of producing architecture decision records, design standards, and reference architectures that have been adopted in practice.

Nice To Haves

Experience leading or supporting large-scale hypervisor migrations or platform consolidations where multiple platforms operate in production simultaneously.
Experience in multi-hypervisor environments and designing the abstraction, operational, and capacity models needed to support them.
Familiarity with accelerator and SmartNIC technologies, confidential computing, and remote attestation.
Experience with key management, hardware security modules, and certificate and secrets management for infrastructure platforms.
Experience supporting virtual desktop platforms or other large-scale managed infrastructure services.
Experience with bare-metal recovery, operationally isolated environments, and recovery architectures with defined recovery objectives.
Contributions to open-source projects in virtualization, operating systems, or infrastructure provisioning.

Responsibilities

Maintain a practical, end-to-end understanding of the hypervisor, operating system, and datacenter stack, including interactions, responsibilities, and cross-layer impacts.
Unblock work stalled between teams by defining missing requirements, prototyping uncertain solutions, driving decisions through appropriate forums, documenting outcomes, and transitioning ownership to relevant teams.
Partner with architects, design authorities, and engineering teams across hypervisor platforms, operating systems, storage, networking, cybersecurity, and datacenter services, providing architectural leadership and technical depth while respecting domain ownership.
Review and strengthen designs in progress to ensure alignment across adjacent domains and contribute to a coherent, scalable platform.
Influence technical direction across organizational boundaries through expertise, evidence, and sound judgment rather than formal authority.
Use prototypes and reference implementations to validate ideas, reduce uncertainty, and inform architectural decisions.
Establish and publish consumer requirements before evaluating technology options so solutions are driven by business needs rather than vendor offerings.
Author and review architecture decisions, design standards, and reference architectures, and maintain alignment between documented standards and implemented solutions.
Lead cross-platform architectural work across the hypervisor estate, including capacity and placement models, lifecycle management, migration strategies, key management, attestation, and interfaces that allow multiple hypervisors to operate as a unified platform.
Provide cross-domain leadership across the operating system layer, including image build and release pipelines, host and guest operating systems at scale, operating systems on accelerator hardware, and associated patching, upgrade, and certification processes.
Mentor engineers and architects, contribute to technical training and curriculum development, and produce documentation that enables teams to operate independently and effectively.

Benefits

Competitive total rewards package, including base salary determined by role, experience, skill set, and location.
Eligible roles may receive commission-based pay and/or discretionary incentive compensation in cash and/or forfeitable equity.
Comprehensive health care coverage.
On-site health and wellness centers.
Retirement savings plan.
Backup childcare.
Tuition reimbursement.
Mental health support.
Financial coaching.
Other benefits and programs based on eligibility.