Principal Engineer, Cloud Strategy Lead

LPL Financial•Fort Mill, SC

4d•$149,350 - $248,848

About The Position

This is the most senior individual contributor role at the heart of LPL's AWS-first Cloud Center of Excellence. You'll set the multi-year strategy for our cloud tooling, Terraform code architecture, and self-service platform — with a dotted line to all five CCOE teams and the five Foundations pods — while spending the majority of your time in code, design documents, and proof-of-concept work. If you want technical leadership, mentorship, and influence at scale without the day-to-day of direct people management, this is your seat. As the Principal Engineer, Cloud Strategy Lead, you set and drive the multi-year technical strategy and architecture for LPL's Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE). This is a senior individual contributor role — not a team or pod leader — that leads cloud strategy and technical architecture across CCOE, with a dotted line to all five CCOE teams (Foundations, Platforms, Containers, Support, Delivery) and the five Foundations pods (Security & Governance, FinOps, Functional Design Engineering & Strategy, Network Engineering, Monitoring) so that strategy and technical architecture stay aligned across the organization. You own the engineering direction for our cloud tooling, Terraform code architecture, and self-service platform, and you are the primary technical liaison between CCOE and Enterprise Architecture, Information Security, and Application Engineering. LPL is an AWS-first CCOE: a multi-account landing zone with 100+ private reusable Terraform modules that enable 60+ AWS services, all delivered through Terraform Cloud and GitHub Actions. You are a hands-on senior IC who spends the majority of your time in code, reference patterns, and proof-of-concept work; technical mentorship across LPL's US offices and India Global Capability Center (GCC) drives your impact, not direct people management.

Requirements

10+ years of progressive technical experience including 5+ years in cloud infrastructure or platform engineering leadership; Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline (or equivalent work experience)
5+ years of hands-on production AWS at scale in a multi-account landing zone, with 4+ years of authoring production Terraform in a private module ecosystem delivered through Terraform Cloud and GitHub Actions
5+ years experience operating as a senior individual contributor (Principal Engineer or equivalent), influencing technical direction across multiple teams without direct authority — including hiring-loop technical interviewing, architecture review participation, and technical mentorship of staff and senior engineers
Experience leading and personally participating in 24x7 production on-call rotations in a fast-paced, security-conscious, regulated environment (financial services strongly preferred)
Strong systems-thinking across security, networking, finance, and developer experience — chooses the change that improves all four
Strategic communicator: equally credible with engineers in a code review and with executives in an ARB
Player-coach who is comfortable in code reviews, architecture sessions, and people 1:1s in the same day
Continuous learner, especially in cloud-native, IaC, platform engineering, and applied AI
Sets vision and translates ambiguous strategy into executable engineering roadmaps
Bias for self-service, automation, and reducing toil for downstream internal customers
Builds high-trust relationships across the US and India organization and across functions (Architecture, Security, FinOps, Application Engineering, Network, Audit)
Calm, decisive incident commander; fosters a strong post-incident learning culture
Excellent written and verbal communication, executive presence, and ability to influence without direct authority
Thrives in matrixed, fast-paced, regulated environments with imperfect information

Nice To Haves

Experience leading the engineering response to a major regulatory or audit event in a financial-services or otherwise regulated firm
Experience defining and rolling out an enterprise platform engineering operating model (Team Topologies, paved roads, golden paths)
Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or MBA
Experience building, scaling, or leading globally distributed engineering teams across the US and India / GCC
Experience integrating agentic AI / GenAI tooling (Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, Bedrock, MCP) into platform, IaC, and engineering practice
Strong scripting / programming proficiency in Python, Bash, or PowerShell
AWS Solutions Architect - Professional
AWS Certified Generative AI Developer - Associate
HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (004) or Authoring & Operations Certified
Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
Open-source contributions, public technical writing, or conference speaking on cloud, IaC, or platform engineering topics
Experience with Backstage or another Internal Developer Platform (IDP)
Experience with FinOps practices and cloud cost management at scale

Responsibilities

Set and evolve the multi-year technical strategy for cloud tooling, IaC, and developer experience across all five CCOE teams (Foundations, Platforms, Containers, Support, Delivery) and the five Foundations pods (Security & Governance, FinOps, Functional Design Engineering & Strategy, Network Engineering, Monitoring)
Define and govern Terraform code architecture standards: module library curation, versioning, deprecation, contribution patterns, and module quality gates
Architect and operate the self-service infrastructure vending platform, including Account Factory for Terraform (AFT), Service Catalog, golden paths, and Internal Developer Platform (Backstage-class) integration
Establish enterprise standards for IaC quality: pre-commit, policy-as-code (Sentinel / OPA), security and compliance scanning, drift detection, and automated remediation
Act as the primary technical liaison between CCOE and Enterprise Architecture, Information Security, and Application Engineering
Drive engineering excellence across CCOE: code review standards, pairing culture, on-call quality, post-incident review discipline, and continuous improvement of the developer experience
Embed agentic AI capabilities into the team's engineering practice (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, Bedrock, MCP servers, agentic IaC and review workflows) and into the platform's self-service experience for internal customers
Drive the technical strategy for embedding agentic AI capabilities into the self-service platform: agentic IaC generation, automated PR review, MCP-backed agents for internal data, and conversational interfaces that let internal customers self-serve common requests
Operate as a senior individual contributor with dotted-line technical leadership to all five CCOE teams (Foundations, Platforms, Containers, Support, Delivery) and the five Foundations pods (Security & Governance, FinOps, Functional Design Engineering & Strategy, Network Engineering, Monitoring) — leading cloud strategy and technical architecture across the organization
Mentor and uplift senior engineers, AVPs, and VPs across CCOE through code review, design partnership, technical pairing, architecture guidance, and certification-path technical advice per the CCOE certification matrix — acting as a force multiplier without direct reports
Operate as a hands-on senior IC: spend the majority of your time in Terraform code, design documents, peer reviews, prototyping, and incident response — technical contribution and mentorship are the primary leverage points
Personally participate in 24x7 on-call rotations as senior incident commander and cross-CCOE technical escalation point
Partner with peer VPs across the Cloud Center of Excellence — the leaders of the five CCOE teams (Foundations, Platforms, Containers, Support, Delivery) and the leaders of the pods within Foundations (Security & Governance, FinOps, Functional Design Engineering & Strategy, Network Engineering, Monitoring) — to align technical direction across boundaries
Champion AWS Well-Architected Framework adoption across all six pillars and drive continuous improvement against operational, security, reliability, performance, cost, and sustainability outcomes
Contribute to and curate the private Terraform module library that powers self-service infrastructure for application teams, including module standards, versioning, deprecation, and contribution patterns
Participate in Agile/Scrum ceremonies as a senior technical voice and partner with the RTE and PMO on dependencies and technical feasibility
Represent CCOE technical strategy in executive forums, architecture review boards, internal audit, and customer engagements; communicate technical risk and trade-offs to non-technical executives