Principal Architect

Akamai Technologies, Inc.; Cambridge (MA); On-site; USD 200,000 - 360,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

FlexBase adapts to job needs

Healthcare benefits

401K savings plan

Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP)

Parental leave

Job summary

Akamai Technologies, Inc. is seeking a Principal Architect for our Cloud Technology Group to design and evolve our global cloud platform. You will drive foundational solutions that power Akamai's cloud products and collaborate across engineering to realize a unified platform vision.

You will lead strategic decisions on architecture, security, reliability, and observability for large-scale systems, working with partners and stakeholders globally.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or its equivalent in a related field.
• 12+ years of relevant experience in architecture and design.
• Extensive experience developing architectures for large-scale distributed systems.
• Strong knowledge of cloud workloads and public cloud offerings.
• Experience ensuring security, reliability and observability in cloud platforms.

Responsibilities

• Identify critical improvements for the cloud platform roadmap.
• Collaborate with architects across engineering to define unified cloud architectures.
• Socialize long-term technical strategy decisions across product lines and teams.
• Engage with external partners and stakeholders to meet platform goals.
• Ensure cloud platform architecture aligns with other product goals.
• Provide leadership through guidance and hands-on design as needed.

Skills

Distributed systems

Cloud platforms

Security & reliability

Architecture strategy

Public cloud experience

Education

Bachelor's degree or equivalent

Job description

Would you enjoy working with the world's most distributed platform for cloud computing, security, and content delivery?

Are you interested in designing platform architectures for cloud computing infrastructure and platform services?

Come join our Cloud Technology Group!

Akamai's Cloud Technology Group (CTG) takes ownership for designing, building, maintaining and operating our global Cloud and CDN platforms. We develop and deploy critical technologies that provide the technical underpinnings for all of Akamai's products. The CTO's team ensures consistent security, reliability and availability for our customers.

Partner with the best

You will lead the evolution of Akamai's cloud infrastructure and platform services by driving key initiatives across multiple engineering teams. In this role, you will design foundational solutions that directly power and support all of Akamai's future cloud products.

As a Principal Architect on the CTO's team of our global cloud platform, you will be responsible for:

• Identifying critical improvements for inclusion in the cloud platform roadmap
• Collaborating with solution‑specific architects across engineering to define architectures that lead toward a unified cloud platform vision
• Socializing and building consensus around long‑term technical strategy decisions across product lines and teams to advance our cloud platform vision
• Engaging with both external partners and stakeholders across the company to achieve our platform evolution goals
• Working with counterparts in engineering to ensure that our cloud platform architecture aligns well with other product goals
• Providing leadership through both high‑level guidance and hands‑on design as needed to execute against our cloud platform roadmap.

Do what you love

To be successful in this role you will:

• Have 12 years of relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree or its equivalent
• Demonstrate extensive experience developing and documenting architectures for large-scale distributed systems
• Have solid experience with high‑availability software systems and methods for achieving service security, reliability and operability objectives
• Possess working knowledge of Internet protocols (routing, TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, etc.) and computer security (TLS, PKI, VPN, etc.)
• Possess expertise in cloud workload management (for containers, VMs, etc.) and control plane paradigms (push, pull, segmentation, reconciliation, etc)
• Have an extensive understanding of SaaS, PaaS, IaaS with experience in one or more public cloud offerings
• Demonstrate experience evaluating and justifying technology choices
• Have experience modernizing and refactoring system designs to bring systems into alignment with enterprise‑grade scalability, reliability, and observability

About us

At Akamai, we make life better for billions of people, trillions of times a day.
Whether you're streaming live events, scrolling social media, watching your favorite series, or managing your savings, we’re the engine behind the scenes. We provide the world's most distributed platform from Cloud to Edge to help the giants of the digital world work faster and stay more secure, making the internet a better experience for everyone.
Our focus is simple:
Cloud and Edge: Running apps closer to users for instant performance.
Security: Neutralizing threats before they ever reach your data.
Content Delivery: Scaling the world's biggest moments without a glitch.
AI: Enabling our customers to build, secure, and scale AI apps on the world's most distributed cloud platform.
At Akamai, we don't just support the internet; we power and protect it, because behind every great digital experience is a massive hidden challenge. And we’re the ones that solve it. When millions of people hit play or pay, Akamai ensures it just works.

Benefits at Akamai:

We support your health, well-being, finances, and life beyond work. See our benefits.

FlexBase adapts to your job's needs

Akamai's FlexBase program is yet another way we show our commitment to providing employees with an exceptional workplace experience. It's not about telling employees where to work; it's about supporting employees to do their best work.
We trust our incredible employees to work in ways that suit them best: at home, in an office, or a combination of both.

Compensation

Akamai is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. For US based candidates only - the base salary for this position ranges from $200,000 - $360,000/year; a candidate’s salary is determined by various factors including, but not limited to, relevant work experience, skills, certifications and location. Compensation for candidates outside the US will vary. The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of annual bonus or incentives, equity awards and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). Akamai provides industry‑leading benefits including healthcare, 401K savings plan, company holidays, vacation (in the form of PTO), sick time, family friendly benefits including parental leave and an employee assistance program including a focus on mental and financial wellness; Eligibility requirements apply.