Principal Platform Architect Kubernetes Kafka

Posted 5 days ago

request technologyOak Park (IL)

Computer Systems Engineers/Architects Computer Systems Design Services

SENIORITY

Manager

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About the role

*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 FlinkAWS foundational services: EC2, EKS, MSK, S3, VPC, IAM, KMS, CloudWatchGitOps tooling: ArgoCD, Flux, Terraform, HelmCI/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 TOGAFAWS Solutions Architect — Associate or Professional (preferred)

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