Principal Cloud Platform Architect - Onsite

Cognizant; Lake Forest (CA); On-site; USD 130,000 - 160,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance

Paid holidays

401(k) plan

Parental leave

Job summary

Cognizant in Lake Forest, CA seeks a Principal Cloud Platform Architect to drive reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency across Azure and AWS.

You will partner with Architecture, COE, Engineering, Testing, and Operations to identify systemic challenges, validate solutions, and establish best practices for large-scale cloud-native platforms.

Qualifications

• 12+ years in software/cloud engineering.
• 5+ years Kubernetes architecture/administration.
• Deep Kubernetes internals: control plane, scheduling, networking, service mesh, security.

Responsibilities

• Architect scalable, reliable cloud-native platforms and patterns.
• Drive Kubernetes modernization and multi-tenant efficiency.
• Define DR, resiliency, and observability strategies for cloud apps.
• Lead PoCs, mentor teams, and promote modern automation practices.
• Collaborate across Architecture, COE, Engineering, Testing, and Ops.

Skills

Kubernetes architecture

Kubernetes administration

Cloud platforms

Infrastructure as Code

CI/CD

Observability

Distributed systems

Site Reliability Engineering

Tools

AKS

EKS

Terraform

Bicep

ArgoCD

GitHub Actions

Azure DevOps

Prometheus

Grafana

OpenTelemetry

Azure Monitor

Job description

*Please note, this role is not able to offer visa transfer or sponsorship now or in the future*

About Us:

Cognizant is one of the world's leading professional services companies, transforming clients' business, operating, and technology models for the digital era. Our unique industry-based, consultative approach helps clients envision, build, and run more innovative and efficient businesses. Headquartered in the U.S., Cognizant, a member of the NASDAQ-100, is ranked 195 on the Fortune 500 and is consistently listed among the most admired companies in the world. Learn how Cognizant helps clients lead with digital at www.cognizant.com.

About Cognizant's IoT Practice:

Intelligent, IoT-enabled products will soon result in the proliferation of data and disrupt virtually all industries. To be successful, both large and small companies must leverage IoT capabilities by designing modern products that fundamentally connect people with processes. Within Cognizant IOT, we engineer industry-aligned, IoT-enabled products that merge industry needs with human drivers. Our intelligent products will revolutionize experiences and result in exciting, transformative outcomes. Without human-centered thinking, connected products are just standalone things—but with it, our modern connected products facilitate a unified way of life enjoyed by all.

Principal Cloud Platform Architect

Position Summary

We are seeking a highly experienced Principal Cloud Platform Architect to drive the operational maturity and scalability of our CONNECT Platform. This is a strategic, hands-on role focused on improving platform reliability, performance, scalability, resiliency, and cloud cost efficiency across Azure and AWS environments.

You will partner closely with Architecture, COE, Engineering, Testing, and Operations teams to identify systemic challenges, validate architectural solutions, and establish best practices for operating large-scale cloud-native platforms. This role emphasizes technical leadership through influence, innovation, and collaboration rather than direct authority.

Key Responsibilities

Platform Architecture & Innovation

• Research, define, and validate cloud-native architectural patterns that improve scalability, reliability, availability, and operational efficiency.


• Drive platform modernization initiatives across Kubernetes-based environments.


• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend strategic platform improvements.

Kubernetes & Cloud Optimization

• Design and optimize large-scale deployments on Azure AKS and AWS EKS.


• Develop advanced workload scheduling, auto-scaling, and resource optimization strategies.


• Improve multi-tenant platform architectures and operational efficiency.


• Ensure optimal utilization of compute, storage, and networking resources.

Reliability, Availability & Resilience

• Architect highly available and fault-tolerant systems.


• Define disaster recovery and resiliency strategies for cloud-native applications.


• Establish reliability engineering practices to proactively prevent production issues.


• Improve platform observability through logging, metrics, tracing, and monitoring frameworks.

Performance & Cost Management

• Drive cloud cost optimization initiatives without compromising system performance.


• Analyze infrastructure consumption patterns and develop scalable cost-control models.


• Identify platform bottlenecks and recommend architectural improvements.

System Validation & Testing

• Partner with validation and system test teams to design large-scale performance and resiliency test scenarios.


• Simulate real-world customer workloads and production-scale environments.


• Validate interactions between distributed system components under stress conditions.

Technical Leadership

• Lead proof-of-concept initiatives and architectural prototypes.


• Mentor engineering teams on cloud-native and platform engineering best practices.


• Promote adoption of modern operational and automation practices across teams.

Required Qualifications

• 12+ years of overall software/cloud engineering experience.


• 5+ years of hands-on Kubernetes architecture and administration experience.


• Deep expertise in Kubernetes internals, including:
  
  
  
  • Control Plane
  
  
  • Scheduling
  
  
  • Networking
  
  
  • Service Mesh
  
  
  • Network Policies
  
  
  • Resource Management
  
  
  • Security
  
  
  
  

Cloud Platforms

• Expert-level experience with:
  
  
  
  • Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)
  
  
  • Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)
  
  
  • Azure Cloud Services
  
  
  • AWS Cloud Services
  
  
  
  

Infrastructure Automation

• Strong experience with:
  
  
  
  • Terraform
  
  
  • Bicep
  
  
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
  
  
  • Configuration Automation
  
  
  
  

CI/CD & GitOps

• Experience implementing:
  
  
  
  • GitOps practices
  
  
  • ArgoCD
  
  
  • GitHub Actions
  
  
  • Azure DevOps
  
  
  • Modern CI/CD pipelines
  
  
  
  

Observability

• Strong knowledge of:
  
  
  
  • Prometheus
  
  
  • Grafana
  
  
  • OpenTelemetry
  
  
  • Azure Monitor
  
  
  • Logging, Monitoring, and Distributed Tracing
  
  
  
  

Distributed Systems

• Deep understanding of:
  
  
  
  • Large-scale distributed architectures
  
  
  • High Availability (HA)
  
  
  • Fault Tolerance
  
  
  • Scalability Patterns
  
  
  • Multi-Tenancy
  
  
  • Performance Engineering
  
  
  
  

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience with Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices.


• Experience operating SaaS platforms at scale.


• Knowledge of FinOps and cloud cost optimization frameworks.


• Experience with service mesh technologies such as Istio or Linkerd.


• Strong background in platform engineering and cloud-native ecosystem tools.

Compensation:

- $130,000 to $160,000 + 10% Target Bonus + Full benefits. Application will be accepted by 10/25/2026

Benefits

Cognizant offers the following benefits for this position, subject to applicable eligibility requirements:

• Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance


• Paid holidays plus Paid Time Off


• 401(k) plan and contributions


• Long-term/Short-term Disability


• Paid Parental Leave


• Employee Stock Purchase Plan