Principal Infrastructure Architect - Cloud + SaaS at Syndesus – Newport Beach, California

Principal Infrastructure Architect – Cloud & SaaS Platforms San Jose, CA | Newport Beach, CA | Hybrid (2–3 days onsite)
Role OverviewWe are seeking a highly experienced, hands-on Principal Infrastructure Architect to lead the architectural evolution of a large-scale, multi-cloud platform. This is a principal-level role — meaning the expectation goes well beyond senior: we are looking for someone who has been there and done it, who has walked into complex enterprise environments, assessed the landscape, and driven meaningful consolidation and modernization with both strategic vision and direct execution.The core mandate is rationalizing an environment with too many overlapping systems — consolidating redundant observability platforms, streamlining security infrastructure, unifying log management, and building a data tokenization capability where none currently exists. This person will report into a VP-level architect and serve as a primary SME for infrastructure strategy.
What You'll DoPlatform Consolidation & Strategy

• Audit existing infrastructure to identify and eliminate redundant technology solutions (e.g., collapsing multiple observability platforms into one)
• Develop and drive data replication strategy and log infrastructure management across the enterprise
• Lead proof-of-concept work to evaluate and recommend replacement technologies
• Build out a net-new data tokenization solution
• Serve as SME for infrastructure strategy — planning AND execution; the doing is as important as the thinking

Cloud-Native Migration & Architecture

• Lead migration of legacy EC2-based workloads to Amazon EKS and Kubernetes; define standards for multi-region availability, auto-scaling, and spot instance orchestration
• Architect and deploy high-performance API Gateways and LLM Gateways to manage traffic for Generative AI workloads
• Implement Service Mesh (e.g., Istio, Linkerd) for advanced traffic splitting, mTLS, and observability

Real-Time Data & Event Infrastructure

• Design infrastructure for high-scale storage engines including AWS-native databases (DynamoDB, Aurora), OLAP systems, and real-time databases (Aerospike, Druid) supporting sub-millisecond latency
• Architect scalable Pub/Sub messaging systems (Kafka, SNS/SQS, Pulsar) to enable event-driven architectures at internet scale

Observability

• Define and implement a unified observability strategy based on OpenTelemetry (OTLP)
• Integrate platforms such as Grafana, Datadog, and Graylog for single-pane-of-glass visibility across logs, metrics, and traces

Identity, Security & Compliance

• Modernize authentication and authorization systems (OIDC, OAuth2, SPIFFE/SPIRE)
• Deploy and manage centralized Secret Stores (HashiCorp Vault, AWS Secrets Manager), security gateways, and automated certificate management
• Design Zero Trust network architectures; familiarity with SOC2 and PCI-DSS a plus

Infrastructure as Code & Technical Leadership

• Champion GitOps culture; enforce IaC best practices using Terraform, Crossplane, or Pulumi
• Mentor senior infrastructure engineers and drive Well-Architected reviews
• Partner cross-functionally with software teams to ensure infrastructure supports rapid product iteration

About YouExperience & Background

• 10+ years in infrastructure engineering and architecture, with a proven track record managing large-scale cloud deployments (AWS primary; GCP/Azure also valued)
• FAANG or Big Tech background is a strong differentiator
• Deep enterprise experience: you've walked into sprawling, complex environments, understood the strategic vision, and driven real change — not just recommendations
• Demonstrated long tenure at key roles; we are looking for people who go deep, not candidates with a string of 1–2 year stints

Technical Requirements

• Kubernetes Expert: deep hands-on mastery of Kubernetes and EKS, including custom controllers, operators, and VM-to-container migration for stateful and stateless workloads
• Database Reliability: strong experience architecting high-scale real-time stores (Aerospike, Redis) and analytics engines (Druid, ClickHouse)
• Observability: proven ability to build observability pipelines from scratch using OpenTelemetry collectors and visualization tools (Prometheus/Grafana/Datadog)
• Automation: expert-level proficiency in Go, Python, or Bash; deep CI/CD experience (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD)
• Networking: deep understanding of cloud networking (VPC, Transit Gateways, Direct Connect) and protocols (gRPC, HTTP/2, WebSocket, QUIC)

Location & Work ModelHybrid position based out of San Jose, CA or Newport Beach, CA — candidates must be within commutable distance of one of these two offices. Onsite presence of 2–3 days per week is expected. Candidates outside these locations will be considered only in exceptional cases and will face a significantly higher bar.
CompensationBase salary is competitive and flexible, commensurate with experience. 25% target bonus. Comprehensive benefits including medical/dental/vision, 401(k), paid parental leave, and unlimited PTO.