Fast Facts

WGU is seeking a Principal Cloud Architect to design and implement cloud solutions, enhance existing systems, and mentor junior engineers, all while contributing to a mission of expanding access to higher education.

Responsibilities: Design and implement cloud solutions, mentor engineers, provide technical support, and publish training materials while ensuring high availability and backup solutions for the organization.

Skills: Expertise in AWS services, infrastructure automation, cloud operations leadership, strong systems administration skills, and scripting/programming experience.

Qualifications: Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, with 6 years of IT experience and relevant AWS certifications; equivalent experience may substitute for education.

Location: Salt Lake City Office, United States of America

Compensation: $157000 - $243400 / Annually

If you’re passionate about building a better future for individuals, communities, and our country—and you’re committed to working hard to play your part in building that future—consider WGU as the next step in your career.

Driven by a mission to expand access to higher education through online, competency-based degree programs, WGU is also committed to being a great place to work for a diverse workforce of student-focused professionals. The university has pioneered a new way to learn in the 21st century, one that has received praise from academic, industry, government, and media leaders. Whatever your role, working for WGU gives you a part to play in helping students graduate, creating a better tomorrow for themselves and their families.

The salary range for this position takes into account the wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to skill sets; experience and training; licensure and certifications; and other business and organizational needs.

At WGU, it is not typical for an individual to be hired at or near the top of the range for their position, and compensation decisions are dependent on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is:

Grade: Technical 411Pay Range: $157,000.00 - $243,400.00

Job Description

Job Duties

• Demonstrates big picture thinking and can not only design but more importantly implement.
• Approaches customer issues strategically, understanding different business requirements and challenges with implementations.
• Participates in new systems architectural reviews from a governance perspective and provides analysis feedback in post deployment critiques.
• Plans and manages hardware platform design, such as identifying components, standardized infrastructure components, serviceability, and creating systems solutions and frameworks.
• Performs analysis of systems and identifies problem areas, identifies ways to enhance existing systems, and develops viable solutions.
• Develops and trains Engineers on DevOps and CI/CD methodologies and tools for automated infrastructure code test, integration, deployment, and assurance.
• Provides technical support to education segment product teams for various activities such as with testing, validation, sustaining, value engineering, and DevOps required for the products we support.
• Publishes white papers, how-to articles, training materials, and presents at our internal summits annually.
• Ensures our systems are built on HA (High Availability) Architecture and provides native Backup/DR support within our defined RTO/RPO requirements.
• Mentors one or more Associate Level Engineers within our Platform Services group and motivates them to produce innovative solutions to the University’s architectural obstacles.
• Performs other job-related duties as assigned.

KSAs

• Expertise implementing AWS services in a variety of distributed computing environments
• Experience with highly available and fault-tolerant enterprise and web-scale software deployments
• Expertise in infrastructure automation through DevOps scripting (e.g. shell, Python, Node, Ruby, Powershell).
• Strong practical Linux and Windows-based systems administration skills in a Cloud (AWS, Azure, Google) or Virtualized environment.
• Experience leading cloud operations, including assurance, monitoring, alerting, and notifications
• Experience scripting/programming in Bash, Java, and Node.js
• Understanding of DevOps, Scrum, and ITIL concepts
• Understanding of Virtualization and/or Containerization
• Understanding of GitFlow model and Continuous Integration with Travis or Jenkins
• Experience using Configuration Management Tools such as Chef and SaltStack
• Experience using monitoring tools like New Relic, Nagios, CloudWatch or IPMon
• Experience and ability to work directly with customers creating cloud infrastructure solutions, leading conversations with key business stakeholders reviewing pros and cons, risks, and best practices.
• Ability to lead the design, development, and deployment of business software at scale or current hands-on technology infrastructure, network, compute, storage, and virtualization experience.
• Effective communication and documentation skills
• Self-starter with a drive to work autonomously as a member of a collaborative team
• Strong service-oriented focus with a customer service attitude
• Strong analytical skills

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Information Technology or related field
• 6 years of IT Production Workload experience
• 3 years of combined experience in AWS CodeBuild, CodePipeline, and/or CodeDeploy
• 3 years of combined experience in the primary AWS services of VPC, IAM, EC2, ELB, RDS, Route53, and S3
• 3 years of experience in Configuration Management using CloudFormation, Ansible, Terraform, Chef, and Puppet
• 3 years of experience using automation tools such as, Terraform, Ansible, and CloudFormation
• 3 years of experience using governance tools such as AWS Config, Inspector, and Lambda
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional or Solutions Architect Professional
• Expertise with the standard software development life cycle (SDLC) and Agile/iterative methodologies
• Equivalent relevant experience performing the essential functions of this job may substitute for education degree requirements. Generally, equivalent relevant experience is defined as 1 year of experience for 1 year of education and is the discretion of the hiring manager.

Preferred Qualifications

• Strong experience with distance education and distance learning students
• Expertise in at least one programming language
• Expertise in cloud spend optimizations and serverless technology such as AWS Lambda
• Expertise with the integration of cloud services with on-premises technologies from Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, HP, SAP, etc.
• Expertise with compliance and risk management requirements (e.g. security, PCI, privacy, SOX, HIPAA, etc.)
• JSON and YAML expertise

Job Description Disclaimer: This position description provides the major duties/responsibilities, requirements and working conditions for the position. It is intended to be an accurate reflection of the current position, however management reserves the right to revise or change as necessary to meet organizational needs. Other responsibilities may be assigned when circumstances require.

Position & Application Details

Full-Time Regular Positions (classified as regular and working 40 standard weekly hours): This is a full-time, regular position (classified for 40 standard weekly hours) that is eligible for bonuses; medical, dental, vision, telehealth and mental healthcare; health savings account and flexible spending account; basic and voluntary life insurance; disability coverage; accident, critical illness and hospital indemnity supplemental coverages; legal and identity theft coverage; retirement savings plan; wellbeing program; discounted WGU tuition; and flexible paid time off for rest and relaxation with no need for accrual, flexible paid sick time with no need for accrual, 11 paid holidays, and other paid leaves, including up to 12 weeks of parental leave.

How to Apply: If interested, an application will need to be submitted online. Internal WGU employees will need to apply through the internal job board in Workday.

Additional Information

Disclaimer: The job posting highlights the most critical responsibilities and requirements of the job. It’s not all-inclusive.

Accommodations: Applicants with disabilities who require assistance or accommodation during the application or interview process should contact our Talent Acquisition team at [email protected].

Equal Employment Opportunity: All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to any protected characteristic as required by law.