Principal Architect, Platform Architecture - FreeWheel

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, provides comprehensive ad platforms for publishers, advertisers, and media buyers. Powered by premium video content, robust data, and advanced technology, we're making it easier for buyers and sellers to transact across all screens, data types, and sales channels. As a global company, we have offices in nine countries and can insert advertisements around the world.
Job Summary
FreeWheel's Enterprise Architecture team partners closely with Engineering organizations to translate technology strategy, platform requirements, and operational needs into scalable platform designs and technical direction. The Principal Enterprise Architect, Platform & Infrastructure reports directly to the Senior Director, Enterprise Architecture - Platform & Infrastructure and serves as a senior technical leader focused on the foundational technologies used to build, deploy, operate, and secure FreeWheel applications. We are seeking an architect with deep experience in cloud and infrastructure platforms who can develop Platform Architecture Roadmaps, Reference Architectures, standards, and technology guidance that improve reliability, scalability, security, developer productivity, and cost efficiency. This architect will also connect technology spending to architecture by analyzing service consumption and efficiency and evaluating alternatives based on their impact to FreeWheel's cost structure. The role will help shape the evolution of our cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platforms, developer tooling, observability, databases, CI/CD, secrets management, and other shared platform capabilities while enabling Platform Engineering teams to execute with consistency and speed.
Job Description
Core Responsibilities

• Serve as a senior architecture partner to Platform Engineering and Engineering teams, providing guidance on platform and infrastructure technology decisions.
• Develop Platform Architecture Roadmaps, Reference Architectures, standards, and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) supporting FreeWheel's engineering ecosystem.
• Guide architectural direction for cloud infrastructure, Kubernetes platforms, serverless technologies, databases, networking, observability, CI/CD, developer tooling, secrets management, and shared engineering services.
• Partner with Platform Engineering on the design and evolution of platform capabilities, ensuring solutions are scalable, secure, reliable, operable, and cost-efficient.
• Define platform guardrails, paved roads, reusable patterns, and golden paths that improve developer productivity and reduce unnecessary technology variation.
• Apply FinOps principles to architecture decisions by analyzing current cloud and other vended technology costs, correlating Engineering spend with services and architectural patterns, assessing utilization efficiency, and identifying material cost drivers.
• Evaluate architecture and platform alternatives in terms of technical fit, operational impact, and expected effect on FreeWheel's total cost of ownership.
• Evaluate build, buy, extend, customize, and deprecate options for infrastructure and platform technologies.
• Lead architecture reviews and provide design guidance for major platform initiatives and modernization efforts.
• Develop strategies and guidelines related to cloud governance, platform standardization, technology lifecycle management, infrastructure modernization, and systems deprecation.
• Shape multi-cloud and hybrid-cloud architecture approaches, workload placement guidance, and migration strategies.
• Define architecture patterns for observability, resilience, secrets management, identity integration, platform APIs, automation, and operational excellence.
• Help shape the strategy, toolsets, and standard practices for utilizing AI and automation within engineering workflows, developer experience, platform operations, and architecture practices.

Expectations

• Operate as an engineering-focused architect who balances platform standardization with product-team flexibility.
• Raise the bar on platform thinking through reusable services, shared capabilities, paved roads, and golden paths.
• Lead technical design discussions and architecture reviews; drive clarity through ADRs, reference architectures, standards, and migration plans.
• Balance near-term engineering needs with long-term modernization and platform sustainability.
• Guide teams through complex technology decisions by making tradeoffs explicit and recommendations actionable.
• Connect technology decisions to financial outcomes by helping teams understand how architecture choices, platform adoption, cloud consumption, and service efficiency affect total cost of ownership.
• Contribute to measurable improvements in reliability, scalability, security, developer productivity, and cost efficiency.
• Mentor architects and engineers while contributing to the continued maturity of the Enterprise Architecture practice.
• Respect and promote inclusion and diversity.

Experience Needed

• 10+ years in software engineering, infrastructure engineering, platform engineering, cloud architecture, or enterprise architecture roles.
• Deep experience with Kubernetes, cloud-native architecture, CI/CD, observability, databases, networking, infrastructure automation, and security-by-design.
• Experience designing and evolving large-scale cloud, hybrid-cloud, or datacenter-based platforms.
• Strong understanding of resiliency engineering, SLOs, observability, platform security, identity, and secrets management.
• Experience evaluating build-versus-buy decisions and creating architecture roadmaps, standards, and reference architectures.
• Experience applying FinOps principles to architecture and platform strategy, including cloud cost analysis, service utilization assessment, workload optimization, technology cost modeling, and total cost of ownership analysis.
• Demonstrated ability to correlate cloud spending with services, architectural patterns, and platform usage; identify inefficiencies; and evaluate alternatives based on their impact to cost structure.
• Ability to communicate effectively with engineers, architects, engineering managers, and senior technology leaders.
• Experience leading architecture reviews and turning ambiguous technical challenges into clear recommendations and execution plans.
• Experience in large-scale distributed environments such as AdTech, FinTech, Telecom, media technology, SaaS, or marketplace platforms.
• Bonus: Experience with platform engineering, internal developer platforms, AI-enabled engineering tooling, or developer productivity initiatives.

Employees at all levels are expected to:

• Understand our Operating Principles; make them the guidelines for how you do your job.
• Own the customer experience - think and act in ways that put our customers first, give them seamless digital options at every touchpoint, and make them promoters of our products and services.
• Know your stuff - be enthusiastic learners, users and advocates of our game-changing technology, products and services, especially our digital tools and experiences.
• Win as a team - make big things happen by working together and being open to new ideas.
• Be an active part of the Net Promoter System - a way of working that brings more employee and customer feedback into the company - by joining huddles, making call backs and helping us elevate opportunities to do better for our customers.
• Drive results and growth.
• Respect and promote inclusion & diversity.
• Do what's right for each other, our customers, investors and our communities.

Disclaimer: This information has been designed to indicate the general nature and level of work performed by employees in this role. It is not designed to contain or be interpreted as a comprehensive inventory of all duties, responsibilities and qualifications.
Comcast is an equal opportunity workplace. We will consider all qualified applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, veteran status, genetic information, or any other basis protected by applicable law.
Skills:
Kubernetes; Cloud Architectures; Infrastructure Architecture
Salary:
Virginia Pay Range: $181,533.12 - $272,299.68
Additional Range: This job can be performed in Illinois, and Denver Campus with a Pay Range of $165,747.63 - $272,299.68
Comcast intends to offer the selected candidate base pay within this range, dependent on job-related, non-discriminatory factors such as experience. The application window is 30 days from the date job is posted, unless the number of applicants requires it to close sooner or later.
The application window is 30 days from the date job is posted, unless the number of applicants requires it to close sooner or later.
Base pay is one part of the Total Rewards that Comcast provides to compensate and recognize employees for their work. Most sales positions are eligible for a Commission under the terms of an applicable plan, while most non-sales positions are eligible for a Bonus. Additionally, Comcast provides best-in-class Benefits to eligible employees. We believe that benefits should connect you to the support you need when it matters most, and should help you care for those who matter most. That's why we provide an array of options, expert guidance and always-on tools, that are personalized to meet the needs of your reality - to help support you physically, financially and emotionally through the big milestones and in your everyday life. Please visit the compensation and benefits summary on our careers site for more details.
Education
Bachelor's Degree
While possessing the stated degree is preferred, Comcast also may consider applicants who hold some combination of coursework and experience, or who have extensive related professional experience.
Relevant Work Experience
15 Years +