PKI & Trust Architect for AI-Driven Distributed Systems

Leadout Capital; San Francisco (CA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Leadout Capital seeks an accomplished Architect to define the strategy and direction for a global, multi-cloud PKI and trust platform. You will drive architecture for certificate lifecycles, identity, and secure communications across workloads and AI agents, balancing reliability with security and scale.

You’ll prototype in live systems, present proposals to executives, mentor engineers, and influence cross-team decisions while advancing post-quantum readiness and zero-downtime migrations.

Qualifications

• 12+ years designing and operating large-scale distributed systems.
• Deep expertise in reliability, security and performance at scale.
• Hands-on experience with AWS or GCP, Kubernetes, and service mesh.
• Strong leadership and ability to influence across teams.

Responsibilities

• Own target architecture and multi-year strategy for certificate lifecycle and trust infrastructure.
• Architect highly available, globally scalable trust infrastructure with measurable SLOs.
• Lead automation-first, zero-downtime migrations and data-driven build-versus-buy decisions.
• Set standards for interfaces between the trust platform and dependent infrastructure.
• Stay hands-on by prototyping, writing critical-path code, and validating architecture.
• Present investment and architecture proposals to senior leadership and mentor engineers.

Skills

Distributed systems architecture

Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP)

Kubernetes

Security and PKI

Leadership / cross-functional

AI-first engineering

Executive communication

Education

Bachelor's degree in related field

Related technical degree

Job description

Leadout Capital seeks an accomplished Architect to define the strategy and direction for a global, multi-cloud PKI and trust platform. You will drive architecture for certificate lifecycles, identity, and secure communications across workloads and AI agents, balancing reliability with security and scale.

You’ll prototype in live systems, present proposals to executives, mentor engineers, and influence cross-team decisions while advancing post-quantum readiness and zero-downtime migrations.