Define and evolve enterprise cloud reference architectures, standards, and guardrails for security, networking, identity, automation, resiliency, and service design.
Lead the design and review of high-impact, cross-functional cloud initiatives, including migrations, platform modernization efforts, and integration of cloud services with on-premises and third-party environments.
Drive the organization's cloud engineering strategy and roadmap, ensuring technical investments support long-term business priorities, operational resilience, and regulatory obligations.
Establish and mature automation-first engineering practices using Infrastructure as Code, policy-as-code, CI/CD, and self-service platform capabilities.
Partner with Cloud Operations and service owners to improve platform reliability, observability, recoverability, and performance, while keeping the Principal Engineer role focused on technical direction rather than day-to-day operational execution.
Influence and strengthen the Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) by defining engineering standards, reusable patterns, governance mechanisms, and architectural review practices.
Provide technical leadership in the evaluation and adoption of cloud-native and third-party technologies, ensuring solutions fit enterprise architecture, risk, and supportability requirements.
Lead root-cause analysis and technical resolution for high-severity or highly complex cloud issues, especially where multiple platforms, teams, or vendors are involved.
Create and maintain high-level designs, engineering patterns, decision frameworks, and architecture guidance that can be consistently applied across teams.
Partner with security, risk, and compliance stakeholders to ensure cloud designs align with enterprise control requirements and regulatory expectations.
Work with finance, product, and engineering leadership to support cost-aware cloud architecture decisions, balancing performance, resiliency, and maintainability with financial stewardship.
Mentor engineers and technical leads, raising the overall engineering capability of the organization through coaching, design reviews, and technical guidance.
Requirements
8+ years of related experience.
Bachelor's degree in related field required; Masters or MBA in related field preferred.
Deep hands-on and architectural experience in both Azure and AWS environments.
Proven experience defining cloud architecture standards, high-level designs, and platform strategies in large, complex organizations.
Advanced expertise in Infrastructure as Code and automation, including tools and languages such as Terraform, Python, and Bash.
Strong understanding of reliability, resiliency, disaster recovery, observability, and performance engineering in cloud environments.
Experience with containers, Kubernetes, and CI/CD platforms in enterprise delivery models.
Strong architectural and technical review skills, including the ability to evaluate trade-offs and guide teams toward scalable, supportable solutions.
Experience working across technical and business functions, including archite
Additional Information
Job Title:
Principal Engineer I - Azure Cloud Engineer
Location:
OH - Columbus
Westernalliancebank · Columbus, OH