Platform Architect in Chicago

Job DescriptionJob Description

Principal Platform Architect

Chicago, IL | Hybrid | Full-Time

Green Card only

Talent Solutions Group is recruiting a Principal Platform Architect for a large, highly regulated enterprise undergoing significant platform and cloud modernization.

This is a senior hands-on individual contributor role for an architect who can define technical direction while remaining close enough to the technology to lead proof-of-concepts, evaluate solutions, and work directly with engineering teams.

The environment combines AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, stream processing, GitOps, infrastructure-as-code, and legacy platforms supporting highly available, performance-sensitive systems.

• Define architecture and technical direction for enterprise platform capabilities
• Design scalable, resilient Kubernetes and AWS infrastructure
• Establish architecture patterns for Kafka and real-time stream processing
• Develop reference architectures, standards, guardrails, and transition plans
• Define and improve GitOps, infrastructure-as-code, CI/CD, and configuration management practices
• Lead technical evaluations and proof-of-concepts for new platform technologies
• Partner with application, engineering, security, and operations teams
• Design for availability, performance, scalability, recoverability, and operational resilience
• Establish observability and platform monitoring standards
• Identify infrastructure risks, capacity constraints, and opportunities for modernization
• Help move complex legacy environments toward modern cloud- architecture

Required Experience

• 10+ years in infrastructure, platform engineering, systems architecture, or platform architecture
• Deep hands-on Kubernetes expertise, including architecture, networking, security, workload design, and operations
• Strong AWS architecture experience
• Hands-on Apache Kafka architecture and implementation experience
• Experience with Apache Flink or a comparable stream-processing framework
• Strong GitOps and infrastructure-as-code experience
• Experience with tools such as ArgoCD, Flux, Terraform and Helm
• CI/CD architecture and automation experience
• Experience working across both legacy/brownfield and cloud- environments
• Strong Linux/Unix and container experience
• Ability to develop architecture diagrams, reference architectures, technical decisions, and migration plans
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to influence both senior technical leaders and engineering teams

Technology Environment

Kubernetes / EKS • AWS • Kafka • Flink • Terraform • Helm • ArgoCD / Flux • CI/CD • Docker • Linux • Observability

AWS experience should include several of the following:

• EKS
• EC2
• VPC
• S3
• IAM
• KMS
• Managed streaming services
• Monitoring and logging services

Background

• Large-scale, highly available enterprise platforms
• Financial services or another regulated industry
• High-throughput or performance-sensitive systems
• Enterprise observability platforms such as Prometheus, Grafana, OpenTelemetry or Splunk
• Platform resilience and performance engineering
• AWS Solutions Architect certification
• TOGAF or similar architecture framework experience

This is not a purely conceptual enterprise architect role.

We're looking for someone who has personally worked with modern platform technologies and can move comfortably between architecture strategy and hands-on technical decision-making.

The strongest candidates will have substantial experience with Kubernetes + AWS + Kafka, understand how large production platforms actually operate, and be able to drive modernization in an environment where legacy and cloud- technologies must coexist.

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, Mathematics, or a related technical discipline . Equivalent relevant professional experience will also be considered.

\nCompany Description

We care about the success of each member of out team! We strive for long lasting partnerships where you can grow and expand your career.

Company DescriptionWe care about the success of each member of out team! We strive for long lasting partnerships where you can grow and expand your career.