Platform Architecture Principal

New York Technology Partners; Chicago (IL); On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

New York Technology Partners in Chicago, IL seeks a Principal, Platform Architecture to define and own platform architecture across container orchestration, Kafka, Flink, and AWS.

The role leads POC efforts, drives platform standards, and partners with Engineering, Security and Operations to build a resilient, scalable foundation for critical market functions in cloud-native and legacy environments.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of experience in infrastructure, platform, or systems architecture roles with enterprise-scale responsibility.
• Hands-on expertise with Kubernetes cluster architecture, workload design, networking, security at scale.
• Experience architecting Apache Kafka deployments, including topic design and streaming topologies.

Responsibilities

• Define and Own Platform Architecture across core platform capabilities (container orchestration, streaming, cloud architecture, CI/CD, observability).
• Develop and maintain target-state platform architectures with transition plans from current state.
• Own reference architectures for Kubernetes workloads and AWS infrastructure patterns.

Skills

Kubernetes architecture

Kafka deployments

Apache Flink

AWS architecture

GitOps pipelines

ArgoCD

Terraform

Helm

CI/CD

Unix/Linux

Education

BS degree in Computer Science/Information Systems/Math

Tools

ArgoCD

Flux

Terraform

Helm

Job description

Job title: Principal, Platform Architecture

Location: Chicago, IL

Notes - Strong hands on technical experience in: GitOps Architecture, Argo CD and Kubernetes Architecture

• CLIENT's Platform Architecture team is responsible for the infrastructure, cloud, networking, compute, storage, and observability tooling that critical market functions depend on.


• The Principal, Platform Architecture is a senior individual contributor who defines the technical direction for CLIENT's core platform capabilities owning how we build, deploy, operate, and evolve the infrastructure layer across both legacy and cloud-native environments.


• This is a hands-on architecture role with enterprise-wide impact.


• You will lead POC efforts, drive platform standards adoption, and serve as the senior technical voice on platform concerns across programs including the Renaissance/Ovation transformation.


• You will work closely with Application Architecture, Engineering, Security, and operations teams to ensure the platform is a resilient, scalable foundation not a bottleneck.

Primary Duties and Responsibilities:

• To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each primary duty satisfactorily.


• Define and Own Platform Architecture


• Lead architecture design and decision-making for CLIENT's core platform capabilities: container orchestration, streaming infrastructure, cloud architecture, CI/CD and


• GitOps pipelines, and observability


• Develop and maintain target-state platform architectures with clear transition plans from current state


• Own reference architectures for Kubernetes-based workloads, Kafka streaming topologies, Flink stream processing, and AWS infrastructure patterns


• Establish platform architecture standards and guardrails that application teams can build against reliably


• Ensure non-functional requirements availability, latency, throughput, recoverability are addressed at the platform level, not delegated to individual application teams

Drive Platform Modernization

• Architect and guide migration of workloads to cloud-native patterns on AWS, including compute, networking, storage, and security services


• Define CLIENT's GitOps model infrastructure-as-code practices, pipeline standards, environment promotion, and configuration management at scale


• Evaluate and recommend platform technologies and tooling; lead proof-of-concept efforts to validate architectural decisions before commitment


• Identify and reduce platform risk across the portfolio single points of failure, unsupported dependencies, capacity constraints, and operational gaps

Collaborate and Influence

• Partner with Application Architecture to ensure platform capabilities match application design requirements particularly for high-throughput, low-latency clearing workloads


• Engage Engineering and operations teams to ensure platform designs are buildable, operable, and supportable not just theoretically sound


• Facilitate architecture working sessions with technical leads and business stakeholders; communicate platform decisions clearly to both technical and non-technical audiences

Raise the Bar on Resilience and Operability

• Establish observability standards logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting as a platform-level capability, not an afterthought


• Define capacity planning and performance engineering practices for platform infrastructure


• Participate in incident reviews and post-mortems; translate operational findings into durable platform architecture improvements


• Ensure platform architecture satisfies CLIENT's regulatory obligations under Regulation SCI and CPMI-IOSCO resilience principles

Qualifications

• The requirements listed are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.


• Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the primary functions.

Required

• 10+ years of experience in infrastructure, platform, or systems architecture roles with demonstrated ownership of enterprise-scale platform decisions


• Deep, hands-on expertise with Kubernetes cluster architecture, workload design, networking, security, and operational patterns at scale


• Hands-on experience architecting Apache Kafka deployments topic design, partitioning strategy, consumer group patterns, schema management, and operational concerns


• Practical experience with Apache Flink or equivalent stream processing frameworks job design, state management, and deployment on Kubernetes


• Strong AWS architecture experience VPCs, EC2, EKS,MSK, S3, IAM, KMS, networking, and security services


• Demonstrated experience designing and implementing GitOps pipelines infrastructure-as-code, environment promotion, secrets management, and release automation using tools such as Flux, ArgoCD, Terraform, or Helm


• Experience with brownfield/legacy environments alongside cloud-native programs


• Ability to produce clear, comprehensive architecture artifacts: diagrams, ADRs, reference architectures, and transition plans


• Strong communication skills able to present platform decisions to executive audiences and work through technical trade-offs with engineering teams

Preferred

• Experience in financial services, particularly regulated environments (SIFMU, clearinghouse, exchange, or bank)


• Familiarity with Regulation SCI, CPMI-IOSCO resilience requirements, or equivalent financial market infrastructure regulatory frameworks


• Experience with observability tooling at scale OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent


• Familiarity with high-performance and low-latency computing patterns relevant to risk and clearing workloads


• Experience with enterprise architecture frameworks such as TOGAF

Technical Skills

• Kubernetes (EKS or self-managed), Kafka, Apache Flink


• AWS foundational services: EC2, EKS, MSK, S3, VPC, IAM,


• KMS, CloudWatch


• GitOps tooling: ArgoCD, Flux, Terraform, Helm


• CI/CD pipelines: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or equivalent


• Splunk, or equivalent


• Unix/Linux environments; container and image management (Docker, Nexus/Artifactory)

Education and/or Experience

• BS degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a similar technical field, or equivalent practical experience. 10+ years of relevant work experience.

Certificates or Licenses

• AWS Solutions Architect — Associate or Professional (preferred)