Principal Platform Architect - Kafka, Flint, Kubernetes, Observability

Dice is the leading career destination for tech experts at every stage of their careers. Our client, Request Technology, LLC, is seeking the following. Apply via Dice today!***Hybrid, 3 days onsite, 2 days remote******We are unable to sponsor as this is a permanent full-time role***A prestigious company is looking for a Principal Platform Architect (Kafka, Flint, Kubernetes, Observability).Responsibilities:Lead architecture design and decision-making for core platform capabilities: container orchestration, streaming infrastructure, cloud architecture, CI/CD and GitOps pipelines, and observabilityDevelop and maintain target-state platform architectures with clear transition plans from current stateOwn reference architectures for Kubernetes-based workloads, Kafka streaming topologies, Flink stream processing, and AWS infrastructure patternsArchitect and guide migration of workloads to cloud-native patterns on AWS, including compute, networking, storage, and security servicesDefine GitOps model infrastructure-as-code practices, pipeline standards, environment promotion, and configuration management at scalePartner with Application Architecture to ensure platform capabilities match application design requirements particularly for high-throughput, low-latency clearing workloadsEngage Engineering and operations teams to ensure platform designs are buildable, operable, and supportable not just theoretically soundEstablish observability standards logging, metrics, tracing, and alerting as a platform-level capability, not an afterthoughtDefine capacity planning and performance engineering practices for platform infrastructureParticipate in incident reviews and post-mortems; translate operational findings into durable platform architecture improvementsEnsure platform architecture satisfies company regulatory obligations under Regulation SCI and CPMI-IOSCO resilience principlesQualifications:BS degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Mathematics, or a similar technical field, or equivalent practical experience.10+ years of experience in infrastructure, platform, or systems architecture roles with demonstrated ownership of enterprise-scale platform decisionsDeep, hands-on expertise with Kubernetes cluster architecture, workload design, networking, security, and operational patterns at scaleHands-on experience architecting Apache Kafka deployments topic design, partitioning strategy, consumer group patterns, schema management, and operational concernsPractical experience with Apache Flink or equivalent stream processing frameworks job design, state management, and deployment on KubernetesStrong AWS architecture experience VPCs, EC2, EKS, MSK, S3, IAM, KMS, networking, and security servicesDemonstrated experience designing and implementing GitOps pipelines infrastructure-as-code, environment promotion, secrets management, and release automation using tools such as Flux, ArgoCD, Terraform, or HelmCI/CD pipelines: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or equivalentObservability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, or equivalentUnix/Linux environments; container and image management (Docker, NexArtifactory)