Principal Cloud Infrastructure Architect

This position is a direct-hire position--NO C2C or sponsorship is available.PLEASE do NOT email if you are an employer/3rd party representative. Thank you.Leadership ResponsibilitiesServe as the single accountable architecture owner for the shared cloud platform, directing infrastructure, DevOps, and platform engineers and holding pattern continuity across every workstream in partnership with the Chief Application Architect.Represent Elevate as the senior infrastructure voice in client executive and architecture forums, translating technical decisions into terms sponsors and functional owners can act on.Mentor and grow engineers and architects on the account and across Elevate's architecture practice, building succession depth so no critical capability rests on one person.Lead the platform team's adoption of AI-assisted and agentic engineering, setting the standards for how these tools are used, reviewed, and held accountable so throughput rises without lowering the bar on security or quality.Guide platform ownership into a durable operating model and managed-service handoff, and build toward leading Elevate's Enterprise Architecture practice: standardized reference architectures, ADR conventions, and governance across engagements, with the Principal as the senior architecture escalation point as new accounts come on.Model Elevate's values and delivery standards in how the team engages the client and one another.Experience and Education (MUST HAVES!)10+ years in cloud/infrastructure architecture and engineering, including senior ownership of enterprise-scale cloud platforms and demonstrated experience as the top infrastructure architect on a large, multi-workstream engagement or platform program.Proven delivery of multi-tenant PaaS or shared-platform environments hosting a portfolio of production applications, with tenant isolation as a core design constraint.Hands-on depth with Azure (primary for the launch engagement) and AWS, modern infrastructure-as-code (Pulumi strongly preferred; Terraform, Bicep, or CloudFormation/CDK acceptable), and mature CI/CD ecosystems.Experience architecting or hosting production AI/ML, LLM, or agentic workloads on Azure or AWS, including the security, data-boundary, capacity-planning, and cost-governance patterns for those workloads in a regulated setting, and demonstrated day-to-day use of AI-assisted and agentic engineering tools in infrastructure delivery (establishing team norms for AI-generated code and applying AI to operations strongly preferred).Direct experience architecting healthcare or other regulated-industry platforms against SOC 2, HIPAA, ISO 27001, and/or HITRUST strongly preferred; experience in other regulated industries (retail and payments, CPG and manufacturing) valued as the role expands to new clients.Experience leading enterprise-scale cloud migration or legacy modernization programs (hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity, data migration, coexistence with on-premises systems), plus familiarity with event-driven and event-sourced architectures, PostgreSQL multi-tenancy (row-level security), and the legacy systems those workloads integrate with.Experience defining operational-readiness and managed-service (MSP) transition models, and building or leading an architecture practice or center of excellence across multiple clients or business units, strongly preferred.Relevant certifications (e.g., Azure Solutions Architect Expert, AWS Solutions Architect Professional, Azure AI Engineer Associate, AWS Machine Learning Specialty) preferred.Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.