Senior GCP Operations Architect

This position is listed on behalf of a partner company, who manages all applications and next steps. Our partner is looking for a Senior GCP Operations Architect based in the United States.

This is a senior cloud architecture and operations role supporting a mission-critical aviation platform that enables the safe and efficient management of national airspace. You will provide technical leadership across Google Cloud infrastructure, security, resiliency, automation, and DevSecOps in a highly visible environment. The role combines architectural guidance with hands-on day-two operations, including Tier 3 troubleshooting, incident analysis, deployment support, and operational readiness. You will work closely with customer operations teams and technical advisors to improve reliability, scalability, security, and operational efficiency. Your expertise will help strengthen high-availability configurations, disaster recovery, monitoring, infrastructure automation, and production support processes. You will also influence technical standards, architecture reviews, change management, and the evolution of cloud operating practices. This is an opportunity to make a direct impact on a high-availability platform where technical excellence, proactive ownership, and mission reliability are essential.

Accountabilities: Provide expert architectural and operational guidance across Google Cloud networking, compute, storage, identity and access management, security, and supporting platform services.

Partner with customer operations teams to introduce cloud best practices, operational patterns, and tools that improve productivity, reliability, and efficiency.

Serve as a primary escalation point for complex infrastructure and operations issues, providing Tier 3 troubleshooting across GCP environments, Terraform deployments, and DevSecOps pipelines.

Take ownership of unfamiliar technical and operational areas, quickly developing expertise and establishing practical solutions as new challenges emerge.

Analyze system metrics, logs, and operational data to identify performance bottlenecks, stability concerns, emerging risks, and opportunities for improvement.

Lead and support root cause analysis, defining sustainable corrective and preventive actions for complex production issues.

Assess and strengthen day-two operational readiness, including troubleshooting procedures, escalation paths, support-team preparedness, backup and recovery strategies, disaster recovery, and high-availability configurations.

Provide guidance on Terraform module development, reusable infrastructure, remote state management, infrastructure automation, CI/CD integration, and deployment troubleshooting.

Review GitOps and DevSecOps workflows and help resolve critical pipeline, infrastructure, and release issues.

Support release management activities, including database release execution, rollback planning, and production readiness.

Review and improve runbooks, standard operating procedures, troubleshooting guides, technical documentation, and other operational artifacts to ensure they remain accurate and aligned with the current architecture.

Review technical design documentation on a recurring basis, advise stakeholders on architectural revisions and governance, and prepare materials for technical and architecture reviews.

Participate in Agile ceremonies, operational reviews, postmortems, retrospectives, technical forums, and other delivery and operations activities.

Conduct regular office hours covering Infrastructure, DevSecOps, and Release Management processes.

Participate in Change Control Board and Architecture Review Board activities, evaluating proposed configuration and architectural changes.

Research relevant GCP services and architectural components to inform technical recommendations and support sound customer decision-making.

Maintain accurate activity, status, and task information in Jira while keeping stakeholders informed of progress and risks.

Reduce technical ambiguity by clarifying requirements, establishing actionable paths forward, and maintaining momentum when priorities or requirements are not fully defined.

Demonstrate proactive technical leadership across the broader program, helping maintain architectural cohesion, operational standards, delivery quality, and customer confidence.

Requirements

8+ years of relevant experience in cloud architecture, platform engineering, infrastructure operations, or a comparable technical discipline.

Extensive hands-on experience designing, operating, or supporting production environments in Google Cloud Platform.

Strong knowledge of GCP networking, compute, storage, identity and access management, security services, and core cloud infrastructure.

Proven ability to translate cloud architecture into practical day-two operational processes, support models, and production-readiness practices.

Hands-on experience with Terraform, including reusable modules, remote state management, deployment troubleshooting, and CI/CD integration.

Experience supporting GitOps, CI/CD, and DevSecOps workflows in production environments.

Strong understanding of infrastructure monitoring, logging, system-health analysis, performance troubleshooting, and operational risk management.

Demonstrated knowledge of high availability, disaster recovery, backup and recovery, resiliency, and business continuity practices.

Experience conducting root cause analysis and developing sustainable long-term remediation strategies.

Ability to troubleshoot complex cloud infrastructure and deployment issues at a Tier 3 level.

Experience creating, reviewing, and maintaining technical design documents, runbooks, SOPs, troubleshooting guides, and operational procedures.

Experience supporting release management, deployment, and rollback processes.

Working knowledge of Agile delivery practices and task-management platforms such as Jira.

Strong customer-facing communication and facilitation skills, with the ability to explain complex architecture and operational recommendations to both technical teams and senior stakeholders.

Proactive ownership mindset with the confidence to identify risks, recommend improvements, resolve ambiguity, and drive issues through to completion.

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or a related technical field is preferred.

U.S. citizenship is required, along with the ability to obtain and maintain an FAA Public Trust clearance.

Experience with Google Cloud professional-level certification, Apigee, SRE practices, regulated or government cloud environments, formal change-control processes, large-scale modernization programs, or aviation and transportation systems is a plus.

Benefits

Flexible paid time off.

All federal holidays off.

Health, dental, and vision insurance plans.

Flexible Spending Account (FSA).

401(k) retirement plan with employer matching.

Company-sponsored life insurance.

Short- and long-term disability coverage.

Professional development opportunities, including training, certifications, and conferences.

Paid cloud developer accounts to support technical growth and experimentation.

Employee referral bonus opportunities.

Headquarters office perks, including parking or Metro reimbursement, coffee, and lunches.

Annual company events, including dedicated team weeks, hackathons, and charity activities.

Access to Washington Capitals and Nationals tickets.

Opportunity to work on a high-impact, mission-critical aviation platform using modern cloud technologies.

Remote work opportunity within the continental United States.

How Jobgether works: We use an AI-powered matching process to ensure your application is reviewed quickly, objectively, and fairly against the role's core requirements. Our system identifies the top-fitting candidates, and this shortlist is then shared directly with the hiring company. The final decision and next steps (interviews, assessments) are managed by their internal team. We appreciate your interest and wish you the best!  Why Apply Through Jobgether?    Data Privacy Notice: By submitting your application, you acknowledge that Jobgether will process your personal data to evaluate your candidacy and share relevant information with the hiring employer. This processing is based on legitimate interest and pre-contractual measures under applicable data protection laws (including GDPR). You may exercise your rights (access, rectification, erasure, objection) at any time.     #LI-CL1