Fast Facts

WGU is seeking a Principal Cloud Architect to lead technological strategies and architectural best practices while driving significant changes within the Craft Education department. This position demands a strong background in cloud architecture and a passion for enhancing the future of higher education through innovative solutions.

Responsibilities: Key responsibilities include applying expert knowledge to improve system architecture, mentoring engineers on DevOps practices, and ensuring high availability and disaster recovery in cloud systems.

Skills: Required skills include expertise in AWS services, experience with IaC scripting, strong systems administration skills, and knowledge of automation tools like Terraform and Ansible.

Qualifications: Minimum qualifications include a University Degree or equivalent experience, over 6 years of IT workload experience, and certifications in AWS DevOps or Solutions Architect.

Location: This position is currently remote but will transition to an in-office/hybrid model once a dedicated office space in Nashville, TN is established. WGU has offices across the USA, with Salt Lake City being the primary location.

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

The Principal Cloud Architect is a position of technical expertise, influence, and leadership in the realm of technology. The position will be required to apply their expert knowledge to ensure best practices and well-engineered architecture across the department. They will also be a key stakeholder and initiator of major changes to processes, engineering practices, and system administration. This position will be required to work in a space of solving critical issues and initiatives across all of Craft Education. It will require an extensive and deep understanding of cutting-edge practices and innovative approaches to problems. Principal Cloud Architects are also tasked with establishing and maintaining a positive and productive culture based on the WGU Leadership Principles.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities: 

•   Utilizes AI (LLMs, Agentic, MCP, etc) to gain efficiency in execution of infrastructure modification for greater rates of delivery.

•   Big picture thinker that can not only design but more importantly implement.

•   Strategically approaching issues, understanding different business and technical requirements and challenges with implementations.

•   Participate in architectural reviews from a governance perspective and provide analysis feedback 

•   Plan and manage hardware platform design such as identifying components, standardized infrastructure components, serviceability and creating system solutions and frameworks.

•   Performing analysis of systems to identify problem areas, identify ways of enhancing existing systems, and develop viable solutions.

•   Develop, mentor, monitor progress towards goals and train Engineers on DevOps and CI/CD methodologies and tools for automated infrastructure code test, integration, deployment, and assurance.

•   Provide technical support to product teams for various activities such as testing, validation, sustaining, value engineering, and DevOps required for the products we support.

•   Ensure our systems are built on HA Architecture and provide native Backup/DR support within our defined RTO/RPO requirements.

•   Performs other related duties as assigned.

Knowledge, Skill and Abilities:

•   Ability to travel to client locations when needed.

•   Expertise implementing AWS services in a variety of distributed computing environments.

•   Experience with highly available and fault-tolerant enterprise and web-scale software deployments desired

•   Expertise in Infrastructure automation through IaC scripting (E.g. Terraform, shell, Powershell)

•   Strong practical Linux and Windows-based systems administration skills in a Cloud (AWS, Azure, Google) or Virtualized environment.

•   Experience leading cloud operations, including data assurance, monitoring, alerting and notifications.

Competencies: 

Organizational Impact:

•   Works proactively to anticipate and prevents highly complex problems crossing disciplines.

•   Develops and establishes technical processes.

•   Will provide solutions for extremely specialized, complex technical issues.

•   Fully understands and quantifies program risks with broad, significant impact.

Problem Solving & Decision Making:

•   Develops and accomplishes goals and objectives independently.

•   This individual builds, leads, and integrates multiple project teams and broad assignments, driving decisions and results.

•   Provides strategy and guidance to leadership and to develop technical talent.

•   Sets and models high standards for effective interactions across groups.

Communication & Influence:

•   This individual communicates with experts within and outside the organization related to significant advancements specific to technology.

•   Works to influence others to accept and understand technical direction, new concepts, practices, and approaches. Requires ability to communicate and influence senior executive leadership regarding matters of strategic importance to the organization. 

•   Frequently conducts briefings to senior leaders both within and outside of the technical function.

Leadership:

•   Responsible for providing guidance, coaching, and training to other employees across the Craft Technology Organization within an area of expertise. 

•   Typically, responsible for managing large, complex project initiatives or strategic important solutions to the organization, involving large cross-functional teams.

•   Demonstrable ability to perform Work Breakdown Structure for creation of project plans. 

Job Qualifications:

Minimum Qualifications:

•   Typically requires a University Degree or equivalent experience.

Department Specific Minimum Qualifications:

•   6+ Years of IT Production Workload Experience

•   3+ Years of combined experience in in the primary AWS services VPC, DNS, IAM, EC2, ECS, EKS, EALB, RDS, Route53 & S3

•   3+ Years of experience in Configuration Management using CloudFormation, Terraform

•   3+ years of extensive experience using automation tools, such as: Terraform, Ansible, and Cloud Formation.

•   3+ years of extensive experience in governance tools like: AWS Config, Inspector

•   AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional or Solutions Architect Professional (Strong candidates that don’t have these certifications can be hired but must obtain their required certifications within 6 months of hiring date.

Preferred Qualifications:

•   Experience creating cloud infrastructure solutions, leading conversations with technology leaders, reviewing pros and cons, risks, and best practices.

•   Expertise in cloud spend optimizations

•   Expertise leading the design, development and deployment of software at scale, infrastructure, network, compute, storage, and virtualization 

•   Understanding of the standard software development life cycle (SDLC) and Agile/iterative methodologies required

•   Expertise with compliance & risk management requirements (eg. security, PCI, privacy, SOX, HIPAA etc.)

•   JSON and YAML Expertise

Physical Requirements:

•   Prolonged periods sitting at a desk and working on a computer.

•   Must be able to lift up to 15 pounds at times.

Location Requirements:

Work location is determined by role and business needs. In addition to our headquarters in Salt Lake City, UT we have office locations across the US. Senior leadership, administrative functions, and technology teams are typically assigned to work in one of our office locations. While this position will begin with a Remote/Work-From-Home designation, we will be moving to an In-Office/Hybrid model once a dedicated office space in Nashville, TN is established.

Disclaimer: This Job Description has been designed to indicate the general nature, essential duties, and responsibilities of work performed by employees within this classification. It does not contain a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities, and qualifications that are required of the employee to do this job. Duties, responsibilities and activities may change at any time with or without notice. This Job Description does not constitute a contract of employment and the University may exercise its employment-at-will rights at any time.

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.