Principal Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Architect

Covalent Solutions, LLC (Covalent) is seeking a visionary and proactive Principal Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Architect to serve as our team’s lead for a high-profile Federal Government program. In this role, you will be the driving force behind the core architecture of the client’s root and organizational accounts. We are looking for more than a traditional technical lead; we need a “Strategic Advisory Leader” who can establish master Terraform and governance frameworks while simultaneously steering cross-vendor alignment across a complex agency ecosystem. The ideal candidate possesses deep experience defining native security guardrails to meet strict compliance mandates (such as NIST and FedRAMP) and will be completely comfortable navigating the complexities of multi-contractor federal operations., Location: Remote eligible; however, candidates local to the Washington, D.C., Maryland, or Virginia (DMV) area are strongly preferred. Personnel must be available to travel to the client s Washington, D.C. offices as needed and as directed by leadership to attend critical meetings, technical exchanges, or collaborative sessions., The Principal Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Architect will provide the overarching architecture, integration governance, and coordination services necessary to achieve the client’s enterprise cloud goals. Key responsibilities include, but are not limited to:

• Enterprise Platform Architecture: Own the overall architecture of the root and organizational cloud services accounts to ensure platform scalability and long-term sustainability.
• Hardened Security & Compliance Guardrails: Define, publish, and maintain cloud security baselines and automated policy validation mechanisms aligned with NIST, FISMA, and FedRAMP frameworks. Ensure all reference implementations drive “secure-by-default” infrastructure practices.
• Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) Governance: Establish master enterprise Terraform standards, baseline configuration policies, and a reusable module repository strategy to eliminate technical fragmentation across all utilized cloud providers.
• Multi-Vendor & Consortium Leadership: Facilitate cross-vendor governance and technical alignment meetings. Coordinate effectively across mixed-contractor ecosystems and distinct product, security, data, and system teams to manage risks, align interfaces, and resolve delivery bottlenecks.
• Product-Led Technical Strategy: Serve as the primary technical advisor to federal leadership regarding mission-critical cloud platform engineering, security architectures, and tool updates. Collaborate with product management to align technical delivery directly with mission outcomes and user needs.
• Automation & Developer Enablement: Drive a “deployment-on-demand” model. Actively replace manual intervention gates with automated build processes, drift-remediation workflows, and standardized self-service templates to optimize overall project velocity.
• Ecosystem Monitoring Blueprinting: Collaborate with engineering teammates to develop standardized logging, auditing, and observability approaches capable of pulling legacy systems into unified enterprise monitoring views.

Do you have experience in System design?, Do you have a Bachelor’s degree?, * Education: Bachelor s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Cloud Engineering, or a related technical discipline (Master s degree preferred).

• Years of Experience: Minimum of 10+ years of progressive experience in enterprise systems architecture and engineering.
• Federal Cloud Leadership: At least 4+ years directly leading cloud-native infrastructure initiatives, platform engineering trends, or DevSecOps implementations within a federal government or highly regulated environment.
• Advanced Infrastructure-as-Code: Mastery of enterprise-level, multi-account Terraform architecture, secure module design, and automated pipeline execution (ideally utilizing secure GitLab SaaS Gov environments).
• Federal Compliance Expertise: Proven track record designing, auditing, and securing federal cloud environments to successfully achieve strict compliance frameworks (FISMA, FedRAMP, NIST).
• Consortium Stewardship: Demonstrated capability in managing communication, setting cross-team technical baselines, and maintaining accountability across multi-contractor or multi-vendor environments.
• Agile Environment: Proven experience working within an outcome-driven, fast-paced Agile software development environment using capacity-based team models.
• Product-Centric Delivery Alignment: Demonstrated success collaborating directly with product managers and cross-functional teams to continuously align technical infrastructure delivery with user needs, strategic product backlogs, and operational priorities., * Accountability: Takes full ownership of all program architecture commitments, consistently delivering high-quality, practical reference patterns while taking personal responsibility for platform sustainability.
• Adaptive Portfolio Coordination: Exceptional organizational skills with a demonstrated capacity to manage technical dependencies, constraints, and moving pieces across capacity-based implementation waves without losing sight of architectural detail.
• Communication & Product Mentorship: Strong verbal and written communication skills, with a natural ability to coach technical and non-technical stakeholders, translate complex deliverables for leadership/OMB, and foster a team environment of continuous learning.
• Judgment & Problem Solving: Ability to work independently with minimal oversight, exercise sound technical judgment to mitigate deployment risks, and resolve multi-platform integration roadblocks proactively.
• Mission-First & User-Centered Mindset: A service-oriented approach to supporting federal partners, applying collaborative design thinking principles to ensure platform infrastructure services maximize the success of broader user-facing systems., * Are you a US Citizen or US permanent resident?
• Are you willing to undergo the process of obtaining a US Public Trust Clearance?
• Do you have 10+ years of professional hands on experience in enterprise systems architecture and engineering?
• Do you have 4+ years of professional hands on experience directly leading cloud-native infrastructure initiatives, platform engineering trends, or DevSecOps implementations within a federal government or highly regulated environment?
• Do you have 4+ years of professional hands on experience of enterprise-level, multi-account Terraform architecture, secure module design, and automated pipeline execution (ideally utilizing secure GitLab SaaS Gov environments)?
• Do you have 4+ years of professional hands on experience and proven track record designing, auditing, and securing federal cloud environments to successfully achieve strict compliance frameworks (FISMA, FedRAMP, NIST)?
• Do you have 8+ years of professional hands on experience demonstrating capability in managing communication, setting cross-team technical baselines, and maintaining accountability across multi-contractor or multi-vendor environments?
• Do you have 8+ years of professional hands on experience and proven experience working within an outcome-driven, fast-paced Agile software development environment using capacity-based team models?
• Do you have 8+ years of professional hands on experience and demonstrated success collaborating directly with product managers and cross-functional teams to continuously align technical infrastructure delivery with user needs, strategic product backlogs, and operational priorities?

Education:

• Bachelor’s (Required)

Language:

• English (Required)

Pulled from the full job description

• 401(k)
• Health insurance
• Paid time off
• Vision insurance
• Dental insurance
• Life insurance, * 401(k)
• Dental insurance
• Health insurance
• Life insurance
• Paid time off
• Vision insurance