Principal Architect

Overview

Powering the world’s payments ecosystem. ACI powers the payments ecosystem globally; you power ACI. You will innovate, collaborate, and grow in an energetic technology culture with decades of proven success. ACIers in all roles are your colleagues and many are your friends. Our size and reach allow you to see the global impact of your work. You are visible, valued, and empowered to shape the future of payments.

The Principal Cloud Architect is a senior technical leader responsible for designing, implementing, and governing enterprise cloud architecture strategies across multi‑cloud environments. Reporting to the Head of Platform Engineering or CTO, this role defines cloud architecture standards, drives cloud adoption initiatives, and provides technical leadership for complex cloud transformations. This position combines deep technical expertise with strategic vision to optimize cloud infrastructure for scalability, security, cost‑efficiency, and business value.

Cloud Architecture & Strategy

• Define and maintain enterprise cloud architecture roadmap aligned with business objectives
• Design reference architectures and architecture patterns for multi‑cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP)
• Establish cloud architecture governance frameworks, standards, and best practices
• Lead architecture review boards and provide technical guidance on major cloud initiatives
• Drive cloud‑native transformation strategies including containerization, serverless, and microservices
• Architect hybrid and multi‑cloud solutions ensuring interoperability and portability
• Evaluate emerging cloud technologies and provide recommendations for adoption
• Develop architecture decision records (ADRs) and maintain architecture knowledge base

Technical Leadership & Solution Design

• Lead architecture design for complex, mission‑critical cloud solutions
• Architect high‑availability, fault‑tolerant systems across multiple availability zones and regions
• Design disaster recovery and business continuity solutions with defined RPO/RTO targets
• Create technical architecture documentation including HLDs, LLDs, network diagrams, and data flow diagrams
• Collaborate with engineering teams to translate architecture vision into implementation roadmaps
• Conduct architecture workshops and design sessions with stakeholders
• Provide technical mentorship and architectural guidance to cloud engineers and architects
• Lead proof‑of‑concept initiatives for strategic cloud technologies

Cloud Security & Compliance

• Design and implement cloud security architecture following Zero Trust principles
• Establish identity and access management (IAM) strategies and policies
• Architect network security solutions including VPCs, security groups, NACLs, and transit gateways
• Implement encryption strategies for data at rest and in transit
• Design security monitoring and incident response frameworks
• Ensure compliance with regulatory requirements (SOC 2, PCI‑DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, FedRAMP)
• Conduct security architecture reviews and threat modeling exercises
• Partner with security teams to implement Dev Sec Ops  practices

Cloud Cost Optimization & Fin Ops

• Architect cost‑efficient cloud solutions optimizing compute, storage, and network resources
• Implement Fin Ops practices and establish cloud cost governance frameworks
• Design automated cost optimization strategies including rightsizing, reserved instances, and savings plans
• Create cost allocation models and chargeback/showback mechanisms
• Monitor cloud spending patterns and provide cost optimization recommendations
• Establish cloud cost budgets, forecasting models, and variance reporting
• Architect solutions leveraging spot instances, autoscaling, and serverless for cost efficiency

Infrastructure as Code & Automation

• Design infrastructure as code (IaC) frameworks using Terraform, Cloud Formation, ARM templates, or Pulumi
• Establish CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure deployment and configuration management
• Architect Git Ops workflows for infrastructure and application deployments
• Implement policy‑as‑code frameworks using tools like Open Policy Agent or Cloud Custodian
• Design automation solutions for cloud resource provisioning,…