Principal Engineer I - Azure Cloud Engineer

Job Title: Principal Engineer I - Azure Cloud Engineer Location: OH - Columbus What you'll do: The Cloud Principal Engineer is a senior technical leader responsible for defining and driving the strategic technical direction of the organization's cloud platforms across Azure and AWS. This role serves as the highest-level engineering authority for cloud architecture, engineering standards, automation patterns, and platform design, ensuring cloud capabilities are secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned with business and regulatory requirements. The Cloud Principal Engineer partners closely with Enterprise Architecture, Security, Application teams, System Integration team, and Operations to establish cloud reference architectures, engineering guardrails, and long-term platform roadmaps. This role leads the resolution of complex cross-domain technical challenges, guides major cloud modernization and migration efforts, and influences enterprise decisions that shape the future-state cloud operating model. As a principal-level engineer, this role is expected to think beyond immediate delivery needs and drive durable technical outcomes through architecture leadership, engineering governance, automation, and mentorship. The Cloud Principal Engineer sets direction, raises engineering standards, and enables teams to deliver cloud solutions consistently and at enterprise scale. Serve as the principal technical authority for cloud engineering across Azure and AWS, providing direction on architecture, platform strategy, engineering standards, and complex technical decisions. Define and evolve enterprise cloud reference architectures, standards, and guardrails for security, networking, identity, automation, resiliency, and service design. Lead the design and review of high-impact, cross-functional cloud initiatives, including migrations, platform modernization efforts, and integration of cloud services with on-premises and third-party environments. Drive the organization's cloud engineering strategy and roadmap, ensuring technical investments support long-term business priorities, operational resilience, and regulatory obligations. Establish and mature automation-first engineering practices using Infrastructure as Code, policy-as-code, CI/CD, and self-service platform capabilities. Partner with Cloud Operations and service owners to improve platform reliability, observability, recoverability, and performance, while keeping the Principal Engineer role focused on technical direction rather than day-to-day operational execution. Influence and strengthen the Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) by defining engineering standards, reusable patterns, governance mechanisms, and architectural review practices. Provide technical leadership in the evaluation and adoption of cloud-native and third-party technologies, ensuring solutions fit enterprise architecture, risk, and supportability requirements. Lead root-cause analysis and technical resolution for high-severity or highly complex cloud issues, especially where multiple platforms, teams, or vendors are involved. Create and maintain high-level designs, engineering patterns, decision frameworks, and architecture guidance that can be consistently applied across teams. Partner with security, risk, and compliance stakeholders to ensure cloud designs align with enterprise control requirements and regulatory expectations. Work with finance, product, and engineering leadership to support cost-aware cloud architecture decisions, balancing performance, resiliency, and maintainability with financial stewardship. Mentor engineers and technical leads, raising the overall engineering capability of the organization through coaching, design reviews, and technical guidance.<