Executive Director (hands on) Platform Architecture

NO OPT

Director - Platform Architecture (Hands on)

• Looking for a hands-on Director. You will need to have come up through infrastructure and then got into architecture. You will be managing 3-5 people. You will be actively doing the architecture (not just managing the architects). Solution architect in platform observerability etc. Strong Kubernetes, DevOps, Containerization, on-prem and cloud, Kafka, and Flink *Industry & Financial experience would be a plus. Not just a manager, but someone who can roll up their sleeves. Minimum 3–5 years managing high-level talent
• Technical familiarity with AWS, Kafka, Flink, and hybrid cloud/on-prem environments

SALARY: $250k - $270k plus 30% bonus

LOCATION: Chicago, IL

Hybrid 3 days onsite and 2 days remote

Owning the technical strategy and standards for all infrastructure domains — cloud, onpremises, networking, compute, storage, and observability. This is a people leadership role responsible for developing a team of principal architects and ensuring their work produces coherent, enterprise-wide platform standards rather than isolated domain expertise.

Qualifications:

Required

• 12 years of experience in infrastructure, platform, or systems architecture
• 3 years in a people management
• Demonstrated experience defining and governing infrastructure architecture standards across multiple domains at organizational scale
• Broad, hands-on knowledge across infrastructure domains:
• cloud (AWS), on-premises data center, networking, compute, storage, and container platforms
• Deep experience with AWS architecture
• Strong working knowledge of Kubernetes
• Experience with Apache Kafka as enterprise streaming infrastructure — deployment, operations, and topology design
• Demonstrated experience leading GitOps and infrastructure-as-code programs — Terraform, Helm, ArgoCD, Flux, or equivalent
• Experience with hybrid and on-premises/cloud connectivity architecture — network design, routing,firewalling, and security zoning

Technical Skills

• Cloud: AWS foundational and advanced services — EC2,
• EKS, MSK, S3, VPC, IAM, KMS, Direct Connect, Transit Gateway, CloudWatch
• Container platforms: Kubernetes (EKS or self-managed),
• Docker, Helm, container networking (CNI)
• Streaming and processing: Apache Kafka, Apache Flink
• GitOps and IaC: Terraform, ArgoCD, Flux, Helm, GitHub Actions or Jenkins
• Networking: routing protocols, firewalling, load balancing,
• DNS, hybrid connectivity, network security zoning
• Storage: block, object, and file storage architecture; backup and recovery patterns
• Observability: OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent
• Unix/Linux environments; artifact management (Nexus, Artifactory)