We’re building a world of health around every individual — shaping a more connected, convenient and compassionate health experience. At CVS Health®, you’ll be surrounded by passionate colleagues who care deeply, innovate with purpose, hold ourselves accountable and prioritize safety and quality in everything we do. Join us and be part of something bigger – helping to simplify health care one person, one family and one community at a time.
Position SummaryWe're hiring a Principal Architect to take ownership of how we do cloud-native architecture and multi-cloud infrastructure strategy at CVS Health. This person will sit within our Enterprise Architecture organization and be responsible for the architecture, standards, and technical direction behind our public cloud platforms and broader hybrid infrastructure posture.
We run workloads across Azure, AWS, and GCP, with a growing footprint on Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, GKE) alongside our on-prem private cloud (OpenShift, KVM, Dell PowerFlex). We need someone who can build and maintain the reference architectures, IaC standards, and workload identity patterns that let our engineering teams build and operate cloud-native systems consistently and securely.
There is real work to do around workload identity, runtime selection, autoscaling guidance, and FinOps. Teams are asking for concrete standards they can follow. Familiarity with observability practices and on-prem/private cloud is valuable here, since cloud-native systems don't operate in isolation, but the core of this role is public cloud and cloud-native architecture.
This is a hands-on role. You'll write architecture docs, build proof-of-concepts, configure cloud infrastructure, and present to leadership.
*This position can work remotely from anywhere in the continental USA.
Responsibilities:Cloud Native Architecture & Multi-Cloud Strategy- Own the enterprise cloud-native reference architecture across Azure, AWS, and GCP, including networking, identity, compute, and storage patterns.
- Lead standards work around cloud security, identity, and IAM, moving teams away from static secrets and toward modern, federated identity patterns.
- Define landing zone and networking standards, including account/subscription structure, VPC/VNet topology, connectivity, and segmentation, that teams can build on consistently.
- Provide guidance on compute runtime selection, including containers vs. VMs vs. bare metal vs. serverless, with a clear decision framework for teams.
- Define and evolve Kubernetes standards across EKS, AKS, and GKE, including cluster architecture, multi-tenancy, and platform hardening.
- Own infrastructure-as-code standards (Terraform, Pulumi, Helm, ArgoCD/GitOps) and drive adoption across engineering teams.
- Help teams connect autoscaling and capacity planning behavior to actual telemetry signals.
- Push FinOps maturity forward by integrating cost data into cloud tooling, establishing unit economics, and working toward open billing standards like FOCUS.
- Identify where AI/ML adds practical value in our cloud operations, such as anomaly detection, root cause analysis, and smarter automation.
- Define architecture standards for AI-powered systems (agents, RAG pipelines) running in the cloud, covering scaling, latency, token costs, and related signals.
- Ensure new AI-powered platforms are architected correctly from day one.
- Participate in cross-functional architecture working groups focused on cloud-native and hybrid cloud standards.
- Publish architecture decision records and reference implementations that teams can actually use.
- Mentor architects and platform engineers; conduct architecture reviews to raise the bar across the org.
- Work with security and compliance on HIPAA, SOX, and PCI requirements as they apply to cloud infrastructure.
- Represent CVS Health in vendor evaluations and stay connected to the open-source ecosystem (CNCF and related communities).
- 10+ years in infrastructure, cloud architecture, or platform engineering
- 8+ years of architecture work in cloud infrastructure at a large enterprise
- Solid experience with at least two of Azure, AWS, or GCP, including networking, identity, compute, and storage
- 5+ years with Kubernetes in production (EKS, AKS, GKE, or OpenShift)
- Strong hands-on experience with infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Pulumi, Helm, ArgoCD, or similar)
- Experience with workload identity and zero-trust networking patterns
- Proven track record writing architecture standards that other teams adopted and followed
- Able to communicate clearly with both engineers and senior leadership
- On-prem / private cloud experience (OpenShift Virtualization, KVM/libvirt, VMware, Dell PowerFlex or similar storage)
- Observability experience, including OpenTelemetry, Grafana (Mimir, Loki, Tempo), Prometheus, Datadog, Splunk, or Dynatrace
- Experience defining SLOs/SLIs and alerting strategies at an organizational level
- Streaming platforms such as Kafka or Confluent
- AIOps or ML-based anomaly detection experience
- FinOps background, including cloud cost optimization, chargeback, and unit economics
- Service mesh (Istio, Envoy, Linkerd) or eBPF-based tools (Cilium, Pixie)
- Involvement in open-source communities (CNCF, OpenTelemetry, etc.)
- Healthcare, insurance, or financial services experience (HIPAA/SOX familiarity)
- Cloud certifications are a plus but not required
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field. Equivalent work experience accepted.
Pay Range
The typical pay range for this role is:
$144,200.00 - $288,400.00
This pay range represents the base hourly rate or base annual full-time salary for all positions in the job grade within which this position falls. The actual base salary offer will depend on a variety of factors including experience, education, geography and other relevant factors. This position is eligible for a CVS Health bonus, commission or short-term incentive program in addition to the base pay range listed above. This position also includes an award target in the company’s equity award program.
Our people fuel our future. Our teams reflect the customers, patients, members and communities we serve and we are committed to fostering a workplace where every colleague feels valued and that they belong.
Great benefits for great people
We take pride in offering a comprehensive and competitive mix of pay and benefits that reflects our commitment to our colleagues and their families.
Additional details about available benefits are provided during the application process and on Benefits Moments.
Qualified applicants with arrest or conviction records will be considered for employment in accordance with all federal, state and local laws.
Skills Required
- 10+ years of experience in infrastructure, cloud architecture, or platform engineering
- 8+ years of cloud infrastructure architecture experience at a large enterprise
- Experience with at least two of Azure, AWS, or GCP, including networking, identity, compute, and storage
- 5+ years of production Kubernetes experience with EKS, AKS, GKE, or OpenShift
- Strong hands-on infrastructure-as-code experience with Terraform, Pulumi, Helm, ArgoCD, or similar tools
- Experience with workload identity and zero-trust networking patterns
- Proven experience writing architecture standards adopted and followed by other teams
- Clear communication with engineers and senior leadership
- On-premises or private cloud experience, including OpenShift Virtualization, KVM/libvirt, VMware, Dell PowerFlex, or similar storage
- Observability experience with OpenTelemetry, Grafana, Prometheus, Datadog, Splunk, Dynatrace, or similar tools
- Experience defining organizational SLOs, SLIs, and alerting strategies
- Experience with streaming platforms such as Kafka or Confluent
- AIOps or machine-learning-based anomaly detection experience
- FinOps experience, including cloud cost optimization, chargeback, and unit economics
- Service mesh or eBPF-based tools experience
- Involvement in open-source communities such as CNCF or OpenTelemetry
- Healthcare, insurance, or financial services experience, including HIPAA or SOX familiarity
- Cloud certifications
- Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field; equivalent experience accepted
CVS Health Compensation & Benefits Highlights
The following summarizes recurring compensation and benefits themes identified from responses generated by popular LLMs to common candidate questions about CVS Health and has not been reviewed or approved by CVS Health.
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Healthcare Strength — Health coverage includes medical, dental, and vision with HSA-eligible options, free preventive care, virtual care, and access to MinuteClinic services. Mental-health resources such as counseling support are emphasized, and coverage is often considered solid for full-time colleagues.
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Retirement Support — A dollar-for-dollar 401(k) match up to 5% after one year and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan are consistently highlighted in Total Rewards materials. Feedback suggests retirement programs are a meaningful strength within the overall package.
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Wellbeing & Lifestyle Benefits — Wellbeing offerings include up to 20 no-cost counseling sessions per issue, backup care, tuition assistance, and substantial in-store discounts, alongside broader wellness tools. These everyday perks expand value beyond base pay and can be especially meaningful for full-time schedules.
CVS Health Insights
What We Do
CVS Health is the leading health solutions company that delivers care in ways no one else can. We reach people in more ways and improve the health of communities across America through our local presence, digital channels and our nearly 300,000 dedicated colleagues – including more than 40,000 physicians, pharmacists, nurses and nurse practitioners. Wherever and whenever people need us, we help them with their health – whether that’s managing chronic diseases, staying compliant with their medications, or accessing affordable health and wellness services in the most convenient ways. We help people navigate the health care system – and their personal health care – by improving access, lowering costs and being a trusted partner for every meaningful moment of health. And we do it all with heart, each and every day.
