Principal Architect, Platform Architecture - FreeWheel

Free Wheel, a Comcast company, provides comprehensive ad platforms for publishers, advertisers, and media buyers. Powered by premium video content, robust data, and advanced technology, we’re making it easier for buyers and sellers to transact across all screens, data types, and sales channels. As a global company, we have offices in nine countries and can insert advertisements around the world.

Job Summary

Free Wheel's Enterprise Architecture team partners closely with Engineering organizations to translate technology strategy, platform requirements, and operational needs into scalable platform designs and technical direction. The Principal Enterprise Architect, Platform & Infrastructure reports directly to the Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture - Platform & Infrastructure and serves as a senior technical leader focused on the foundational technologies used to build, deploy, operate, and secure Free Wheel applications.

We are seeking an architect with deep experience in cloud and infrastructure platforms who can develop Platform Architecture Roadmaps, Reference Architectures, standards, and technology guidance that improve reliability, scalability, security, developer productivity, and cost efficiency. This architect will also connect technology spending to architecture by analyzing service consumption and efficiency and evaluating alternatives based on their impact to Free Wheel's cost structure.

The role will help shape the evolution of our cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platforms, developer tooling, observability, databases, CI/CD, secrets management, and other shared platform capabilities while enabling Platform Engineering teams to execute with consistency and speed.

Job Description

• Serve as a senior architecture partner to Platform Engineering and Engineering teams, providing guidance on platform and infrastructure technology decisions.
• Develop Platform Architecture Roadmaps, Reference Architectures, standards, and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) supporting Free Wheel’s engineering ecosystem.
• Guide architectural direction for cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platforms, serverless technologies, databases, networking, observability, CI/CD, developer tooling, secrets management, and shared engineering services.
• Partner with Platform Engineering on the design and evolution of platform capabilities, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, reliable, operable, and cost-efficient.
• Define platform guardrails, paved roads, reusable patterns, and golden paths that improve developer productivity and reduce unnecessary technology variation.
• Apply Fin Ops principles to architecture decisions by analyzing current cloud and other vended technology costs, correlating Engineering spend with services and architectural patterns, assessing utilization efficiency, and identifying material cost drivers.
• Evaluate architecture and platform alternatives in terms of technical fit, operational impact, and expected effect on Free Wheel’s total cost of ownership.
• Evaluate build, buy, extend, customize, and deprecate options for infrastructure and platform technologies.
• Lead architecture reviews and provide design guidance for major platform initiatives and modernization efforts.
• Develop strategies and guidelines related to cloud governance, platform standardization, technology lifecycle management, infrastructure modernization, and systems deprecation.
• Shape multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud architecture approaches, workload placement guidance, and migration strategies.
• Define architecture patterns for observability, resilience, secrets management, identity integration, platform APIs, automation, and operational excellence.
• Help shape the strategy, toolsets, and standard practices for…