Principal Architect - Cloud Native Platforms (Kubernetes)

Would revolutionizing the cloud computing space excite you?

Are you passionate about the design of Cloud Native Platforms, building the infrastructure that Cloud products and services run on?

Come join Akamai Cloud!

Akamai's Cloud Technology Group (CTG) takes ownership for designing, building, maintaining, and operating our public cloud computing platform. We develop applications and services to empower our customers. Our mission is to accelerate innovation by making cloud computing simple, scalable, affordable, and accessible to all. We design, develop, test, and maintain products that run our IaaS platform.

Shape the future of Akamai's Cloud Infrastructure

We are looking for a Principal Architect with expertise in Kubernetes and Cloud Native technologies to lead the architecture and design of our Kubernetes-based platform that forms the foundation of our cloud infrastructure products and services. In this role, you will be working embedded as part of the engineering development team, engaging as a core member of the Cloud Native system architecture team.

As a Principal Architect, you will be responsible for:

• Owning the system design and implementation, helping to guide engineering while ensuring alignment with the big picture
• Building proof of concepts to help make design choices and recommend technologies
• Working with product managers and product architects to help inform the product direction
• Contributing to and helping to shape the engineering roadmap by working with product and engineering management and other business stakeholders
• Developing best practices, sharing knowledge, and mentoring
• Collaborating with engineering teams in an Agile environment that fosters innovative solutions, rapid development cycles, and open communication

Do what you love

To be successful in this role you will:

• Have 12+ years of relevant experience and majoring in Computer Science or a related field.
• Have experience building and operating highly available, fault-tolerant, and scalable platforms
• Have experience building production services using Kubernetes and Cloud-Native technologies (e.g., ArgoCD, Flux, Helm, Cilium, RKE2, etc.)
• Have advanced knowledge of Kubernetes concepts such as Operator/Controller patterns, Cluster API, and multi-cluster
• Have experience and an understanding of containers and the technologies that revolve around them (e.g., docker, containerd, etc.)
• Demonstrate significant experience with Linux, Go, Bash
• Be familiar with CSI, CNI, Crossplane, Load Balancing, and Service Mesh frameworks

About us

At Akamai, we make life better for billions of people, trillions of times a day.
Whether you're streaming live events, scrolling social media, watching your favorite series, or managing your savings, we're the engine behind the scenes. We provide the world's most distributed platform from Cloud to Edge to help the giants of the digital world work faster and stay more secure, making the internet a better experience for everyone.
Our focus is simple:
Cloud and Edge: Running apps closer to users for instant performance.
Security: Neutralizing threats before they ever reach your data.
Content Delivery: Scaling the world's biggest moments without a glitch.
AI: Enabling our customers to build, secure, and scale AI apps on the world's most distributed cloud platform.
At Akamai, we don't just support the internet; we power and protect it, because behind every great digital experience is a massive hidden challenge. And we're the ones who solve it. When millions of people hit play or pay, Akamai ensures it just works.

Benefits at Akamai: We support your health, well-being, finances, and life beyond work. See our benefits.

FlexBase adapts to your job's needs

Akamai's FlexBase program is yet another way we show our commitment to providing employees with an exceptional workplace experience. It's not about telling employees where to work; it's about supporting employees to do their best work.
We trust our incredible employees to work in ways that suit them best: at home, in an office, or a combination of both.