Principal Platform Architect - Cloud, Kubernetes & FinOps

Comcast Resume; Englewood (CO); On-site; USD 165,000 - 272,000; Full time

Job summary

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, is seeking a Principal Enterprise Architect to lead platform and infrastructure architecture across cloud environments. You will shape roadmaps, reference architectures, and ADRs while guiding alignment with platform engineering and engineering teams to improve reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency.

You will influence cloud governance, observability, security-by-design, and developer tooling, and drive modernization of shared platform capabilities to

Qualifications

• 10+ years in software engineering, infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, cloud architecture, or enterprise architecture roles.
• Deep experience with Kubernetes, cloud-native architecture, CI/CD, observability, databases, networking, infrastructure automation, and security-by-design.
• Experience designing and evolving large-scale cloud, hybrid-cloud, or datacenter-based platforms.
• Strong understanding of resiliency engineering, SLOs, observability, platform security, identity, and secrets management.
• Experience evaluating build-versus-buy decisions and creating architecture roadmaps, standards, and reference architectures.
• Experience applying FinOps principles to architecture and platform strategy, including cloud cost analysis, service utilization assessment, workload optimization, technology cost modeling, and total cost of ownership analysis.
• Demonstrated ability to correlate cloud spending with services, architectural patterns, and platform usage; identify inefficiencies; and evaluate alternatives based on their impact to cost structure.
• Ability to communicate effectively with engineers, architects, engineering managers, and senior technology leaders.
• Experience leading architecture reviews and turning ambiguous technical challenges into clear recommendations and execution plans.
• Experience in large-scale distributed environments such as AdTech, FinTech, Telecom, media technology, SaaS, or marketplace platforms.
• Bonus: Experience with platform engineering, internal developer platforms, AI-enabled engineering tooling, or developer productivity initiatives.

Responsibilities

• Serve as a senior architecture partner to Platform Engineering and Engineering teams, providing guidance on platform and infrastructure technology decisions.
• Develop Platform Architecture Roadmaps, Reference Architectures, standards, and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) supporting FreeWheel’s engineering ecosystem.
• Guide architectural direction for cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platforms, serverless technologies, databases, networking, observability, CI/CD, developer tooling, secrets management, and shared engineering services.
• Partner with Platform Engineering on the design and evolution of platform capabilities, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, reliable, operable, and cost-efficient.
• Define platform guardrails, paved roads, reusable patterns, and golden paths that improve developer productivity and reduce unnecessary technology variation.
• Apply FinOps principles to architecture decisions by analyzing current cloud and other vended technology costs, correlating Engineering spend with services and architectural patterns, assessing utilization efficiency, and identifying material cost drivers.
• Evaluate architecture and platform alternatives in terms of technical fit, operational impact, and expected effect on FreeWheel’s total cost of ownership.
• Evaluate build, buy, extend, customize, and deprecate options for infrastructure and platform technologies.
• Lead architecture reviews and provide design guidance for major platform initiatives and modernization efforts.
• Develop strategies and guidelines related to cloud governance, platform standardization, technology lifecycle management, infrastructure modernization, and systems deprecation.
• Shape multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud architecture approaches, workload placement guidance, and migration strategies.
• Define architecture patterns for observability, resilience, secrets management, identity integration, platform APIs, automation, and operational excellence.
• Help shape the strategy, toolsets, and standard practices for utilizing AI and automation within engineering workflows, developer experience, platform operations, and architecture practices.

Skills

Cloud Architectures

Infrastructure Architecture

Kubernetes

Education

Bachelor’s Degree

Job description

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, is seeking a Principal Enterprise Architect to lead platform and infrastructure architecture across cloud environments. You will shape roadmaps, reference architectures, and ADRs while guiding alignment with platform engineering and engineering teams to improve reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency.

You will influence cloud governance, observability, security-by-design, and developer tooling, and drive modernization of shared platform capabilities to