This is the most senior individual contributor role at the heart of LPL's AWS-first Cloud Center of Excellence. You'll set the multi-year strategy for our cloud tooling, Terraform code architecture, and self-service platform — with a dotted line to all five CCOE teams and the five Foundations pods — while spending the majority of your time in code, design documents, and proof-of-concept work. If you want technical leadership, mentorship, and influence at scale without the day-to-day of direct people management, this is your seat.

Job Overview:

As the Principal Engineer, Cloud Strategy Lead, you set and drive the multi-year technical strategy and architecture for LPL's Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE). This is a senior individual contributor role — not a team or pod leader — that leads cloud strategy and technical architecture across CCOE, with a dotted line to all five CCOE teams (Foundations, Platforms, Containers, Support, Delivery) and the five Foundations pods (Security & Governance, FinOps, Functional Design Engineering & Strategy, Network Engineering, Monitoring) so that strategy and technical architecture stay aligned across the organization. You own the engineering direction for our cloud tooling, Terraform code architecture, and self-service platform, and you are the primary technical liaison between CCOE and Enterprise Architecture, Information Security, and Application Engineering. LPL is an AWS-first CCOE: a multi-account landing zone with 100+ private reusable Terraform modules that enable 60+ AWS services, all delivered through Terraform Cloud and GitHub Actions. You are a hands-on senior IC who spends the majority of your time in code, reference patterns, and proof-of-concept work; technical mentorship across LPL's US offices and India Global Capability Center (GCC) drives your impact, not direct people management.

Responsibilities:

• Set and evolve the multi-year technical strategy for cloud tooling, IaC, and developer experience across all five CCOE teams (Foundations, Platforms, Containers, Support, Delivery) and the five Foundations pods (Security & Governance, FinOps, Functional Design Engineering & Strategy, Network Engineering, Monitoring)

• Define and govern Terraform code architecture standards: module library curation, versioning, deprecation, contribution patterns, and module quality gates

• Architect and operate the self-service infrastructure vending platform, including Account Factory for Terraform (AFT), Service Catalog, golden paths, and Internal Developer Platform (Backstage-class) integration

• Establish enterprise standards for IaC quality: pre-commit, policy-as-code (Sentinel / OPA), security and compliance scanning, drift detection, and automated remediation

• Act as the primary technical liaison between CCOE and Enterprise Architecture, Information Security, and Application Engineering

• Drive engineering excellence across CCOE: code review standards, pairing culture, on-call quality, post-incident review discipline, and continuous improvement of the developer experience

• Embed agentic AI capabilities into the team's engineering practice (e.g., Cursor, Claude Code, Bedrock, MCP servers, agentic IaC and review workflows) and into the platform's self-service experience for internal customers

• Drive the technical strategy for embedding agentic AI capabilities into the self-service platform: agentic IaC generation, automated PR review, MCP-backed agents for internal data, and conversational interfaces that let internal customers self-serve common requests

• Operate as a senior individual contributor with dotted-line technical leadership to all five CCOE teams (Foundations, Platforms, Containers, Support, Delivery) and the five Foundations pods (Security & Governance, FinOps, Functional Design Engineering & Strategy, Network Engineering, Monitoring) — leading cloud strategy and technical architecture across the organization

• Mentor and uplift senior engineers, AVPs, and VPs across CCOE through code review, design partnership, technical pairing, architecture guidance, and certification-path technical advice per the CCOE certification matrix — acting as a force multiplier without direct reports

• Operate as a hands-on senior IC: spend the majority of your time in Terraform code, design documents, peer reviews, prototyping, and incident response — technical contribution and mentorship are the primary leverage points

• Personally participate in 24x7 on-call rotations as senior incident commander and cross-CCOE technical escalation point

• Partner with peer VPs across the Cloud Center of Excellence — the leaders of the five CCOE teams (Foundations, Platforms, Containers, Support, Delivery) and the leaders of the pods within Foundations (Security & Governance, FinOps, Functional Design Engineering & Strategy, Network Engineering, Monitoring) — to align technical direction across boundaries

• Champion AWS Well-Architected Framework adoption across all six pillars and drive continuous improvement against operational, security, reliability, performance, cost, and sustainability outcomes

• Contribute to and curate the private Terraform module library that powers self-service infrastructure for application teams, including module standards, versioning, deprecation, and contribution patterns

• Participate in Agile/Scrum ceremonies as a senior technical voice and partner with the RTE and PMO on dependencies and technical feasibility

• Represent CCOE technical strategy in executive forums, architecture review boards, internal audit, and customer engagements; communicate technical risk and trade-offs to non-technical executives

What are we looking for?

We’re looking for strong collaborators who deliver exceptional client experiences and thrive in fast-paced, team-oriented environments. Our ideal candidates pursue greatness, act with integrity, and are driven to help our clients succeed. We value those who embrace creativity, continuous improvement, and contribute to a culture where we win together and create and share joy in our work.

Requirements:

• 10+ years of progressive technical experience including 5+ years in cloud infrastructure or platform engineering leadership; Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related discipline (or equivalent work experience)

• 5+ years of hands-on production AWS at scale in a multi-account landing zone, with 4+ years of authoring production Terraform in a private module ecosystem delivered through Terraform Cloud and GitHub Actions

• 5+ years experience operating as a senior individual contributor (Principal Engineer or equivalent), influencing technical direction across multiple teams without direct authority — including hiring-loop technical interviewing, architecture review participation, and technical mentorship of staff and senior engineers

• Experience leading and personally participating in 24x7 production on-call rotations in a fast-paced, security-conscious, regulated environment (financial services strongly preferred)

Core Competencies:

• Strong systems-thinking across security, networking, finance, and developer experience — chooses the change that improves all four

• Strategic communicator: equally credible with engineers in a code review and with executives in an ARB

• Player-coach who is comfortable in code reviews, architecture sessions, and people 1:1s in the same day

• Continuous learner, especially in cloud-native, IaC, platform engineering, and applied AI

• Sets vision and translates ambiguous strategy into executable engineering roadmaps

• Bias for self-service, automation, and reducing toil for downstream internal customers

• Builds high-trust relationships across the US and India organization and across functions (Architecture, Security, FinOps, Application Engineering, Network, Audit)

• Calm, decisive incident commander; fosters a strong post-incident learning culture

• Excellent written and verbal communication, executive presence, and ability to influence without direct authority

• Thrives in matrixed, fast-paced, regulated environments with imperfect information

Preferences:

• Experience leading the engineering response to a major regulatory or audit event in a financial-services or otherwise regulated firm

• Experience defining and rolling out an enterprise platform engineering operating model (Team Topologies, paved roads, golden paths)

• Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or MBA

• Experience building, scaling, or leading globally distributed engineering teams across the US and India / GCC

• Experience integrating agentic AI / GenAI tooling (Cursor, Claude Code, Copilot, Bedrock, MCP) into platform, IaC, and engineering practice

• Strong scripting / programming proficiency in Python, Bash, or PowerShell

• AWS Solutions Architect - Professional

• AWS Certified Generative AI Developer - Associate

• HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (004) or Authoring & Operations

• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)

• Open-source contributions, public technical writing, or conference speaking on cloud, IaC, or platform engineering topics

• Experience with Backstage or another Internal Developer Platform (IDP)

• Experience with FinOps practices and cloud cost management at scale

Pay Range: