Cloud Architect, Senior

Company

Qualcomm Incorporated

Qualcomm IT is seeking a Sr. Staff Cloud Architect to own the strategy, architecture, and execution of our Git Ops-driven platform engineering capabilities. You will serve as a technical authority and organizational multiplier, setting the direction for our EKS platform today while building the foundation for future multi-cloud expansion. This is a high-impact, high-autonomy role for an IT architect who operates at the intersection of deep technical expertise and broad organizational leadership.

• Platform Strategy & Architecture:
  Define and drive the multi-year platform roadmap across EKS maturation and multi-cloud expansion; establish scalable platform patterns for multi-tenant environments including cluster lifecycle, upgrade strategies, and operational readiness; co-own architectural governance as a peer to others in IT.
• Infrastructure as Code:
  Own the Terraform platform strategy across module design, state management, multi-environment patterns, and IaC governance; establish reference implementations and guardrails that enable distributed engineering teams to deliver infrastructure consistently and safely at scale.
• Kubernetes Platform Engineering (EKS):
  Own end-to-end cluster provisioning and lifecycle management including autoscaling with Karpenter, add-on lifecycle management, and cluster upgrade and rollout strategies; establish organizational standards for cluster operations that scale across multiple teams and environments.
• Git Ops & CI/CD Operating Model:
  Establish and own the enterprise Git Ops operating model using Argo CD as the primary continuous delivery platform; define multi-environment promotion strategies, deployment guardrails, and auditable delivery pipelines; extend Git Ops standards across multiple application and platform teams using Git Hub Actions for CI/CD orchestration.
• Reliability, Observability & Cost:
  Own platform reliability and cost efficiency strategy; drive observability standards using Datadog and Prometheus/Grafana including dashboards, alerting, and SLO frameworks that measurably improve operational outcomes.
• Security & Policy:
  Define secure-by-default platform patterns and own policy enforcement using Kyverno and Cilium; serve as the technical authority partnering with security stakeholders on controls, exceptions, and governance.
• Organizational Leadership & Communication:
  Communicate platform strategy, investment rationale, and operational health to senior IT leadership; represent platform engineering in architecture reviews and cross-organizational forums; build alignment across platform, security, and application teams without direct authority.
• Technology Evaluation & Innovation:
  Lead structured build versus buy assessments and proactively evaluate emerging platform technologies across the CNCF landscape; ensure the platform strategy remains forward-looking through disciplined evaluation of open-source projects, vendor capabilities, and multi-cloud control plane developments.
• Technical Talent Development:
  Mentor senior and staff engineers; shape hiring bar standards; establish communities of practice that raise the platform engineering capability across the Qualcomm enterprise.
• Operational Excellence:
  Own the on-call model, runbook standards, and incident response practices; lead high-severity incident resolution and long-term corrective action planning. On-call participation is required, including potential 24/7 coverage.

• 10+ years of IT-related experience with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Applied Mathematics, or Engineering OR 14+ years without, with clear progression from technical execution to organizational technical leadership.
• 5+ years operating Kubernetes at enterprise scale; deep EKS expertise required including multi-tenant architecture and cluster lifecycle ownership.
• Advanced Terraform expertise including module strategy, state management, and multi-environment governance.
• Strong CI/CD fundamentals using Git Hub Actions or similar experience to build pipelines integrating building, linting, testing, Dev Sec Ops , and Argo CD integration.
• Advanced AWS…