Principal Platform Architect Kubernetes Kafka

***Position is bonus eligible***

Prestigious Financial Institution is currently seeking a Principal Platform Architect with strong Kubernetes and Kafka experience. Candidate will help define the technical direction for 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 that will lead POC efforts, drive platform standards adoption, and serve as the senior technical voice on platform concerns across programs including the transformation.

Responsibilities:

Define and Own Platform Architecture

• Lead architecture design and decision-making for the 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 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

Qualifications:

• 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
• 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
• Observability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent
• Unix/Linux environments; container and image management (Docker, NexArtifactory)
• BS degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a similar technical field, or equivalent practical experience.
• 10+ years of relevant work experience.

Preferred Skills:

• 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
• AWS Solutions Architect — Associate or Professional (preferred)