Cloud Architect, Staff

Company:Qualcomm IncorporatedJob Area:Information Technology Group, Information Technology Group > IT Cloud ArchitectGeneral Summary:Qualcomm IT is seeking a Staff Cloud Architect to design, build, and govern the GitOps release process, CI/CD automation, and developer tooling for our internal developer platform built on EKS. Working as part of the broader Cloud Team, you will shape how platform changes are built, versioned, promoted, and released, and help drive the delivery practices that keep the platform team shipping predictably. This is a hands-on, high-autonomy role for an IT architect who pairs deep technical execution with the ability to define standards independently and drive their adoption across teams without direct authority.
This role requires full-time onsite work in San Diego, CA (5 days per week).
This role is not eligible for Qualcomm immigration sponsorship.
What You Will Own:
• GitOps Release Process & Governance: Design, implement, and govern the platform GitOps release process using Argo CD; define multi-environment promotion workflows, deployment guardrails, and release documentation; independently set GitOps standards and drive their adoption across platform and application teams.
• CI/CD Automation: Own platform infrastructure CI/CD workflow definitions and pipeline implementation using GitHub Actions; build pipelines that integrate building, linting, testing, DevSecOps scanning, and Argo CD delivery; continuously reduce release lead time and manual toil.
• Branching, Versioning & Repository Automation: Define and maintain the platform branching strategy and version tagging scheme; implement repository and pull request automation using gitStream to streamline code review, routing, and merge workflows.
• Developer Experience & Tooling: Treat the platform as a product; build self-service \"paved road\" templates, tooling, and documentation that reduce friction for internal teams adopting the platform; gather user feedback and track adoption with measurable outcomes.
• Process & Ways of Working: Help drive the platform team's agile delivery practices, including sprint planning, sprint goal tracking, daily standups, backlog refinement, and retrospectives; create, prioritize, and delegate backlog work across the team; bring process formality that improves delivery predictability. Opportunity to serve as Scrum Master for candidates with that experience.
• Infrastructure as Code: Design and build Terraform modules, state management, and multi-environment patterns; apply and extend the reference implementations and guardrails that let engineering teams deliver infrastructure consistently and safely.
• Kubernetes Platform Engineering (EKS): Contribute to cluster provisioning and lifecycle management in multi-tenant environments, including autoscaling with Karpenter, add-on lifecycle management, and cluster upgrades; make sure release processes support safe, repeatable rollout of cluster changes.
• Reliability, Observability & Security: Continuously evaluate and tune platform services to improve reliability, performance, and cost efficiency; apply observability standards using Datadog and Prometheus/Grafana to pipeline and release health; implement secure-by-default delivery patterns with Kyverno and Cilium in partnership with security stakeholders.
• Cross-Team Influence & Communication: Communicate release plans, process changes, and delivery health to IT leadership and stakeholder teams; represent the platform in architecture and change reviews; author technical design docs and proposals, validate them with Cloud Team architects, and drive implementation through delivery; partner with Cloud Team architects and leadership to align CI/CD and GitOps capabilities with the multi-year platform roadmap.
• Technical Talent Development: Mentor senior and mid-level engineers on GitOps, CI/CD, and delivery practices; participate in interview loops and help uphold the hiring bar.
• Operational Excellence: Contribute to runbook standards and incident response practices; lead resolution of release and pipeline-related incidents and drive corrective actions afterward. On-call participation is required, including potential 24/7 coverage.
Minimum

Qualifications:
• 7+ years of IT-related experience with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Applied Mathematics, or Engineering OR 10+ years without, with demonstrated progression from technical execution to team-level technical leadership
• 3+ years operating Kubernetes in production; hands-on EKS experience including cluster lifecycle and multi-environment operations
• Proven experience designing and governing GitOps release processes, including branching strategies, multi-environment promotion, and release versioning/tagging
• Advanced CI/CD expertise using GitHub Actions or similar to build pipelines integrating building, linting, testing, DevSecOps, and Argo CD integration
• Strong Terraform expertise including module development, state