Principal Architect, Security & Performance

Overview

The Principal Architect, Security & Performance serves as a technical authority and individual contributor across the Dealer Tire Consumer eCommerce Group (CEG), spanning both the Dealer Tire and Simple Tire platforms. This role focuses on designing a robust security posture to satisfy strict OEM contractual data obligations, architecting resilient cloud environments, and driving code‑level application performance and database stability that adhere to established enterprise standards.

• Partner with the broader enterprise Dealer Tire security teams to continuously monitor, evaluate, and harden the collective security posture across all consumer‑facing digital applications.
• Serve as the principal subject matter expert (SME) for all cloud installations, consumer data privacy safeguards, PII protection, and PCI compliance requirements and provide high‑level technical blueprinting and structural signoffs for annual SOC2 and PCI security life cycles.
• Review complex pull requests, infrastructure scripts, and third‑party vendor integrations to ensure alignment with master architecture guidelines.
• Identify, prototype, and champion the introduction of cutting‑edge tech stacks, edge‑computing practices, and optimization methods that drive organizational value.
• Act as an elite advisory consultant to the SRE, Core Systems, and Dev Ops management layers as needed for Infrastructure.
• Design, deploy, and maintain advanced edge security configurations within Akamai, directly owning the architecture for Web Application Firewall (WAF) rule sets, Bot Management defense strategies, and comprehensive DDoS/DoS mitigation layers.
• Proactively analyze edge security logs and threat intelligence to build real‑time protective policies against credential stuffing, malicious scraping, API abuse, and application‑layer exploits across all digital touchpoints.
• Architect and enforce security protocols for the isolated Dealer Tire and Simple Tire AWS environments to fulfill data privacy mandates with Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs).
• Implement a thorough Security Management process to keep the CEG environments secure from potential harm.
• Take full technical ownership of cross‑platform application speed, server response times, and database query optimization.
• Partner closely with engineering teams to refactor, tune, and optimize applications and data functions to eliminate systemic application bottlenecks.
• Leverage next‑generation enterprise AI orchestration tools (such as Claude Code) to rapidly accelerate technical designs, generate documentation, and perform high‑level code architecture reviews.
• Act as an architectural bridge between the application development layer and the underlying systems layer to champion holistic performance excellence.

• Bachelor’s degree in information technology or related field.
• Minimum of 10 years of experience in Information Technology and business environments.
• At least 5 years operating directly in production cybersecurity architecture, backend software engineering, or cloud infrastructure roles.
• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) designation preferred.
• Proven expertise in high‑availability e‑commerce environments.
• Strong background in information security practices and compliance.
• Excellent communication skills and a collaborative approach.
• Cloud & Networking Expertise:
  Deep hands‑on experience in architectural design within Amazon Web Services (AWS) and advanced Content Delivery Networks, specifically focusing on enterprise Akamai/Cloudflare implementations including WAF tuning, Bot Manager engineering, and DDoS threat‑shield deployment.
• Performance Engineering:
  Proven capability to read, write, and optimize application components utilizing modern frameworks and languages (e.g., PHP, Python, React, Next.js).
• Data Systems:
  Advanced familiarity with optimizing high‑volume relational databases (Aurora AWS, MySQL, PostgreSQL) and search optimization clusters (Elasticsearch).
• Systems Intelligence:
  Ability to synthesize complex application code logic with underlying cloud network configurations to diagnose and resolve performance issues quickly.
• Security…