Principal Solutions Architect

About the Role:
AFS isseekinganPrincipal Solutions Architectto lead the design build and automation of ourcutting-edgecloud infrastructure in aDevSecOpsenvironment. The ideal candidate is passionate about building secure scalable andhighly availableplatformsto meet business needs.

As a subject-matter expert in AWS your deep knowledge of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Amazon EKS for container orchestration and advanced CI/CD pipelines will be instrumental in enabling our development teams toleveragea powerful secure and scalable self-service cloud platform.

While our primary focus is AWS experience in a hybrid environment and private cloud platforms such as VMware orOpenshiftwill make you stand out.

Responsibilities:

• AWS Infrastructure & Architecture:

• Design build andmaintainscalable resilient and secure environments primarily within AWSusing frameworks such as the Well-Architected framework.

• Implement and manage core AWS services including networking (VPC Transit Gateway Route53) Kubernetes (EKS) compute (EC2 Lambda) storage (S3 EBS) and databases (RDS).

• Architect andoperatecontainerized workloads using Amazon EKS including cluster management scaling and security.

• ImplementAWS IAM creating and managing roles policies and permissions based on the principle of least privilege.

• Design immutable infrastructure

• DevSecOps& Automation:

• Champion and implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) usingtools such asTerraformto automate cloud resource provisioning and management.

• Develop manage andoptimizerobust CI/CDpipelinesto enable rapid and reliable software delivery integrate security best practices directly into the platform and pipelines.

• Develop custom automation scripts and tooling (e.g. using Python Go or Bash) to streamline operations andeliminatemanual processes heavily focusing on the usage ofAPIs.

• Team Enablement & Collaboration:

• Act as a cloud subject matter expert providing guidance and support to development teams tooptimizetheir use of the platform.

• Collaborate with stakeholders to evaluate new cloud-native technologies and recommend solutions that enhance efficiency and capability.

• Champion foundational best practices includingGitworkflows and the proficient use ofAI toolsto accelerate development and problem-solving.

• Divide big projects into manageable tasks for junior staff.

Required Skills & Experience:

• 10 years of experience with any of the following technologies:

• • Expert-levelproficiencywith Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with strong hands-on experience inTerraform or other languages to include advanced usage such as targeted applies imports and more.
  • Deep experience with container orchestration specifically designing and managingAmazon EKS
  • Strong command ofAWS IAMroles policies and security best practices.
  • Proven experience designing building andmaintainingautomatedCI/CD pipelines(e.g. Jenkins GitLab CI AWSCodePipeline).
  • Solid understanding of cloud networking Linux/Unix administration and security principles.
  • ProficiencywithGitand modernGitOps

• Mustpossessand maintain required DoD 8140 certifications.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with VMware vSphere in a hybrid cloud context.

• Experience with configuration management tools like Ansible.

• Familiarity with other public clouds (Azure GCP).

• Proficiencyin one or more programming languages (Python Go JavaScript/TypeScript).

• Understanding of common authentication mechanisms OIDC OAuth2 LDAP SAML.

• Experience contributing to open-source projects.

• One or more of the following certifications:

• AWS Solutions Architect - Professional

• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)

• HashiCorpCertified: Terraform Associate/Professional

Clearance

• An active TS/SCI federal security clearance is required