
Principal Architect
Boston, MA · FlexibleJob$200–360K/yrSeen todaySeen in employer's feed today
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Job overview
The Principal Architect will lead the evolution of Akamai’s cloud infrastructure and platform services, driving initiatives across engineering teams and designing foundational solutions for future cloud products. The role shapes a unified platform vision, builds consensus on long-term technical strategy, engages internal and external stakeholders, and provides high-level guidance and hands-on design. It sits on the CTO’s team within the Cloud Technology Group.
Skills & qualifications
Skills
Qualifications
Benefits
Full job description
Would you enjoy working with the world's most distributed platform for cloud computing, security, and content delivery?
Are you interested in designing platform architectures for cloud computing infrastructure and platform services?
Come join our Cloud Technology Group!
Akamai's Cloud Technology Group (CTG) takes ownership for designing, building, maintaining and operating our global Cloud and CDN platforms. We develop and deploy critical technologies that provide the technical underpinnings for all of Akamai's products. The CTO's team ensures consistent security, reliability and availability for our customers.
Partner with the best
You will lead the evolution of Akamai's cloud infrastructure and platform services by driving key initiatives across multiple engineering teams. In this role, you will design foundational solutions that directly power and support all of Akamai's future cloud products.
As a Principal Architect on the CTO's team of our global cloud platform, you will be responsible for:
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Identifying critical improvements for inclusion in the cloud platform roadmap
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Collaborating with solution-specific architects across engineering to define architectures that lead toward a unified cloud platform vision
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Socializing and building consensus around long-term technical strategy decisions across product lines and teams to advance our cloud platform vision
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Engaging with both external partners and stakeholders across the company to achieve our platform evolution goals
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Working with counterparts in engineering to ensure that our cloud platform architecture aligns well with other product goals
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Providing leadership through both high-level guidance and hands-on design as needed to execute against our cloud platform roadmap.
Do what you love
To be successful in this role you will:
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Have 12 years of relevant experience and a Bachelor's degree or its equivalent
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Demonstrate extensive experience developing and documenting architectures for large-scale distributed systems
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Have solid experience with high availability software systems and methods for achieving service security, reliability and operability objectives
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Possess working knowledge of Internet protocols (routing, TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, etc.) and computer security (TLS, PKI, VPN, etc.)
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Possess expertise in cloud workload management (for containers, VMs, etc.) and control plane paradigms (push, pull, segmentation, reconciliation, etc)
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Have an extensive understanding of SaaS, PaaS, IaaS with experience in one or more public cloud offerings
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Demonstrate experience evaluating and justifying technology choices
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Have experience modernizing and refactoring system designs to bring systems into alignment with enterprise-grade scalability, reliability, and observability
About us
At Akamai, we make life better for billions of people, trillions of times a day.
Whether you're streaming live events, scrolling social media, watching your favorite series, or managing your savings, we're the engine behind the scenes. We provide the world's most distributed platform from Cloud to Edge to help the giants of the digital world work faster and stay more secure, making the internet a better experience for everyone.
Our focus is simple:
Cloud and Edge: Running apps closer to users for instant performance.
Security : Neutralizing threats before they ever reach your data.
Content Delivery : Scaling the world's biggest moments without a glitch.
AI : Enabling our customers to build, secure, and scale AI apps on the world's most distributed cloud platform.
At Akamai, we don't just support the internet; we power and protect it, because behind every great digital experience is a massive hidden challenge. And we're the ones who solve it. When millions of people hit play or pay, Akamai ensures it just works.
Benefits at Akamai: We support your health, well-being, finances, and life beyond work. See our benefits. (https://www.akamai.com/careers/working-at-akamai?utm\_source=akamai&utm\_medium=social&utm\_campaign=benefits)
FlexBase adapts to your job's needs
Akamai's FlexBase program is yet another way we show our commitment to providing employees with an exceptional workplace experience. It's not about telling employees where to work; it's about supporting employees to do their best work.
We trust our incredible employees to work in ways that suit them best: at home, in an office, or a combination of both.
Connect with us on social and see what life at Akamai is like!
Compensation
Akamai is committed to fair and equitable compensation practices. For US based candidates only - the base salary for this position ranges from $200,000 - $360,000/year; a candidate’s salary is determined by various factors including, but not limited to, relevant work experience, skills, certifications and location. Compensation for candidates outside the US will vary. The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of annual bonus or incentives, equity awards and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). Akamai provides industry-leading benefits including healthcare, 401K savings plan, company holidays, vacation (in the form of PTO), sick time, family friendly benefits including parental leave and an employee assistance program including a focus on mental and financial wellness; Eligibility requirements apply.
Equal Employment Opportunity Rights
Akamai Technologies is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer that values the strength that diversity brings to the workplace. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment and will not be discriminated against on the basis of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, protected veteran status, disability, or other protected group status.
How this job compares
Set against the 3,031 open Cloud Architect jobs on Olive Jobs, counted November 9, 2026.
- Pay
- This posting$200–360K/yr
- Massachusetts median$154–208K/yr73 salary ranges
- US median$147–237K/yr2,754 salary ranges
This range's midpoint, $280K, is 55% above the Massachusetts median midpoint ($181K) — in the top quarter of Cloud Architect salary ranges in Massachusetts.
- Openings
- Olive Jobs lists 80 open Cloud Architect jobs in Massachusetts and 3,031 across the US. 12% of them nationwide are listed as remote or flexible.
- Hiring the most in Massachusetts
- Amazon32 open
- Oracle11 open
- Kelly Services5 open
- Experience
- This posting asks for at least 12 years of experience — more than three in four Cloud Architect postings that state a minimum ask for (median 9 years, across 2,591 postings).
- Education
- 837 of the 3,031 open Cloud Architect jobs (28%) ask for a bachelor's degree or higher.
Counted across the open, public US postings on Olive Jobs on November 9, 2026. Pay medians are the middle values of the low ends and of the high ends of postings that list both ends of a range in the same cadence (a yearly salary or an hourly rate); a range's midpoint is halfway between its ends. Pay and experience figures resting on fewer than 20 postings are left out.
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