Senior Principal Cloud Architect

SAIC; San Diego (CA); Hybrid; USD 160,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

SAIC seeks a Senior Principal Cloud Architect in San Diego, CA to lead cloud initiatives for complex programs with DoD-aligned architectures. You will provide strategic guidance, design scalable cloud solutions, and mentor engineering teams across data, security, and operations.

The role emphasizes secure, resilient infrastructure, cloud migration and optimization, with onsite requirements and up to 10% travel. Hybrid work arrangements may be considered for local candidates.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree and 14+ years of professional cloud experience.
• US citizenship with ability to obtain Interim Secret clearance.
• Proven track record in designing and deploying cloud solutions for DoD or equivalent large programs.
• Expertise in AWS, networking, VPNs, IaaS/PaaS/SaaS, security and automation.

Responsibilities

• Provide technical leadership for cloud architecture and hands-on implementation.
• Plan, design, migrate, re-platform, integrate and operate complex cloud environments.
• Define security processes and ensure CSO compliance with DoD policies.
• Evaluate cloud services, select tools, and guide data migration and capacity planning.
• Develop and test cloud and virtualization systems and document best practices.
• Collaborate with data engineers/scientists to align cloud platforms with data strategy.

Skills

Cloud architecture

AWS

Security

DevOps tools

CI/CD

Scripting languages

Education

Bachelor's degree

14+ years experience

Tools

AWS

Git

CloudFormation

SSM

YAML

Docker

Kubernetes

Job description

Job ID 2616971

Location San Diego, CA, US

Date Posted 2026-09-17

Category Software

Subcategory SW Engineer

Schedule Full-Time

Shift Day Job

Travel Yes - 10% of the time

Minimum Clearance Required Interim_Secret

Clearance Level Must Be Able to Obtain Secret

Potential for Remote Work ORA_REMOTE

SAIC is seeking a Senior Principal Cloud Architect in San Diego, CA. The successful candidate initiates, supervisors, and/or develops requirements from a project's inception to conclusion for complex programs. Provides strategic advice, technical guidance and expertise to program and project staff. Provides detailed analysis, evaluation and recommendations for improvements, optimization development, and/or maintenance efforts for client-specific or mission critical challenges/issues.

This is a remote role in San Diego, CA but must be local to area due to onsite needs, up to 10% of travel involved in this role.

Job Duties

• Providing technical leadership and hands‑on development and implementation of commercial cloud solution architectures that modernize the way our customers architect, deploy, and use cloud technology, focusing on security, scalability, and resiliency
• Planning, designing, and managing the migration, re‑platforming, integration, implementation and operation of complex cloud environments
• Communicating, defining, administering, and implementing various security processes and assist with the transformation of platforms
• Ensuring commercial cloud service offerings (CSO) adhere to DoD Cloud Computing policy/guidelines
• Providing specific, detailed information for hardware and software selection, cloud service provider selection, implementation techniques, application data migration techniques and tools for the most efficient solution to meet business needs, including present and future capacity requirements
• Developing and conducting testing of cloud and virtualization systems
• Maintaining technical expertise relevant industry standards and in cloud computing and virtualization technologies such as cloud service provider architecture, design, and configuration; cloud deployment models including public, community, private, and hybrid; cloud service delivery models including infrastructure, platform, and software-as-a-service; automation; hypervisors; containers; virtual compute, storage, and networks; virtual infrastructure management; self-provisioning; and scaling
• Evaluating and reporting on new cloud and virtualization technologies to enhance capabilities of cloud‑based and virtualized services
• Participating with senior managers to establish strategic plans and objectives
• Design and implement secure, scalable cloud infrastructure that supports enterprise data platforms, shared data services, analytics workloads, and AI/ML development environments
• Collaborate with software engineering, data engineering, and data science teams to ensure cloud architectures align with enterprise data strategy, governance, security, and operational requirements

Qualifications

Requirements

• Bachelors and fourteen (14) years or more experience
• Must be a U.S. Citizen
• Must be able to obtain an Interim Secret Clearance to start
• Must be able to obtain a Secret Clearance after start
• Process requirements from government customer, prioritize taskings and work based on government direction and timelines
• Proven track record of work experience as a cloud architect, designing and deploying cloud solutions
• Expertise in Active Directory design and maintenance
• In‑depth understanding of, and experience as a cloud engineer with AWS, Networking, VPNs, IaaS, PaaS
• Demonstrated experience in one or more following activities - IaaS, PaaS and SaaS Services (compute, storage, network, security, administration, automation, application services, databases)
• Ability to utilize a variety of tools like Git, YML, and AWS security capabilities (WAF, GuardDuty, Security Groups, IAM, etc.)
• Knowledge of an IT Service Management (ITSM) tool suite
• Experience with AWS Workspaces or experience deploying VDI solutions to AWS Cloud
• Configuration and change management experience working directly with/for a Government customer
• In depth troubleshooting experience with the ability to tackle the toughest environment issues
• Experience with how to write SSM documents in JSON/YAML
• Experience with how to write/test/deploy new or existing CloudFormation templates
• Understand enterprise Data Architectures, Data Engineering, Analytics, and AI enablement principles, and the ability to collaborate closely with the stakeholders including Data Architects, Data Engineers, and Data Scientists to design and support cloud platforms that enable scalable data pipelines, advanced analytics, and AI capabilities

Desired Skills

• Master's Degree and 10 or more years of experience
• AWS Cloud Solutions Architect Professional Certification
• Fluent with multiple scripting languages
• AWS networking experience including AWS site to site VPNs, Transit Gateway and Direct connect
• Knowledge of routing using BGP in a DoD environment
• Familiarity with DNS in an AWS govcloud environment using Route53, knowledge of DISA Iodyn is a plus
• Proficiencies with DevOps tools (Docker/Kubernetes/Harbor/ECS/EKS/Fargate/Gitlab-ci/Artifactory)
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) methodologies and associated tools
• Demonstrated expertise in creating and executing CI/CD pipelines

Target salary range $160,001 - $200,000. The estimate displayed represents the typical salary range for this position based on experience and other factors.