Solution Architect - Cloud Engineering at Costco in Issaquah, WA

Costco IT is responsible for the technical future of Costco Wholesale, the third largest retailer in the world with wholesale operations in fourteen countries. Despite our size and explosive international expansion, we continue to provide a family, employee centric atmosphere in which our employees thrive and succeed.

This is an environment unlike anything in the high-tech world and the secret of Costco’s success is its culture. The value Costco puts on its employees is well documented in articles from a variety of publishers including Bloomberg and Forbes. Our employees and our members come FIRST. Costco is well known for its generosity and community service and has won many awards for its philanthropy. The company joins with its employees to take an active role in volunteering by sponsoring many opportunities to help others.

Come join the Costco Wholesale IT family. Costco IT is a dynamic, fast-paced environment, working through exciting transformation efforts. We are building the next generation retail environment where you will be surrounded by dedicated and highly professional employees.

Solution Architects create IT architecture & design solutions based on business requirements, industry trends, and technology options. Solution Architects are responsible and accountable for the solution architecture in partnership with Enterprise Architects, Domain Architects, and Engineering teams. Solution Architects partner with the delivery team for solution planning, delivery, detailed design, and implemented solutions. Solution Architects ensure the implemented solutions are consistent with the approved architecture. Solution Architects communicate, mentor, and lead teams based on program or project needs for solution delivery.

The Costco Cloud team is responsible for providing multi cloud infrastructure and the associated platforms, tools, and services required to onboard applications into the cloud globally. The Foundational Engineering team architects, designs, and manages the implementation and configuration of Costco’s cloud platforms. The Cloud Express team is responsible for development of a zero-touch automated platform that deploys cloud infrastructure for value streams. The Cloud Onboarding team reviews value streams proposals and assigns priority to onboard applications to the cloud and provides feedback and recommendations for architecture, platforms, and resources. The Cloud Automation Tools team is responsible for the tools leveraged to store and deploy infrastructure as code to build resources within Costco’s hybrid, multi-cloud platforms. It is essential that the solutions factor in a multi cloud environment and that requirements are gathered to clearly understand fit for purpose when designing or assisting with the solution. All of these functions leverage IaC best practices for implementation and configuration to maintain strong security posture, provide traceability, and ensure consistency.

The Cloud Solution Architect will create and enhance existing cloud architecture and design solutions based on business requirements and industry trends for multi cloud technology and automation solutions.

If you want to be a part of one of the worldwide BEST companies “to work for”, simply apply and let your career be reimagined.

ROLE

● Designs, develops, and ensures compliance to architectural standards throughout the lifecycle.

● Analyzes the Business-IT environment (run, grow, and transform the business) to detect critical deficiencies, and recommend solutions for improvement (systems of record, differentiation, and innovation).

● Identifies aging technology issues, or misalignment, with business requirements, and proposes solutions.

● Partners with Enterprise Architects for domain roadmaps and reference architecture.

● Executes projects and initiatives on the domain roadmap in partnership with Enterprise Architects.

● Consults with application and infrastructure development projects, and identifies when it is necessary to modify projects to accommodate the solution architecture.

● Ensures cohesiveness of solution designs across various projects/solutions.

● Collaborates with Enterprise Architects to balance needs between Solution Architectural Guardrails.

● Designs, develops, and directs solution architectures, design exceptions, and governance activities in compliance with target states, reference architectures, architecture standards, technology guardrails, and security and operational guidelines.

● Identifies the organizational impact (Skills, processes, structures, or culture) and financial impact of the solutions architecture.

● Creates non-functional specs for operational agility, disaster recovery, and support.

● Establishes solution delivery flow for continuous integration, testing and delivery, and operational deployment in partnership with Project Managers, Solution Leads, and other stakeholders.

● Conducts design reviews to validate alignment with architecture.

● Modifies solution architecture to support changing business or technology requirements.

● Documents solutions architecture design and analysis work, and communicates architectural decisions that impact solution.

● Defines the principles, guidelines, standards, and solution patterns to ensure decisions are aligned with the enterprise's future-state architecture vision.

● Communicates infrastructure, software, information, and/or solution concepts to all levels of management.

● Designs methodology that consistently yields the right level of technical design documentation and develops technical solutions that conform both to customer requirements and information development standards.

● Provides standard and reference patterns for common use-cases on Costco’s Cloud environment with the goal of achieving self-service by teams with established guardrails.

● Develops and executes proof of concepts to evaluate validity of designs and solutions proposed.

● Executes projects and initiatives on the domain road-map in partnership with Enterprise Architects.

● Designs secure, self-service, automated offerings for Value Stream and Shared Services teams.

● Guides accelerated development of zero-touch automation platform for streamlining the adoption of modern hybrid multi-cloud infrastructure (Azure, Google Cloud Platform) by effectively and efficiently onboarding internal application development teams to modern infrastructure within a container-first (AKS, GKE) enterprise architectural environment

● Defines and drives adoption of best practices for Cloud platforms, tools, and services

● Defines and effectively prioritizes the development of new functional capabilities for multi-cloud infrastructure (projects, services, resources, and offerings) within an automated Cloud infrastructure platform.

● Ensures Cloud automation platform’s architectural and system design aligns with existing networking, security, and SOX compliance requirements while architecting, developing, and maintaining a scalable production-grade system.

● Ensures Costco IT value streams have the best experience in migrating, building, modernizing, and maintaining new and legacy applications within Azure and Google Cloud Platform infrastructure, based upon prescriptive architectural guidance and consultation provided by the Solution Architect while they’re onboarding into cloud.

● Identifies dependencies with Costco value streams and shared services based on enterprise security architectures.

● Identifies the impact a proposed architecture will have on the cloud network and pivots to sustainable solutions.

● Analyzes trends in Cloud architectures and patterns, and provides strategic direction and recommendations.

● Advocates for governance models, frameworks, and process refinements specific to the cloud.

● Serves as a senior trusted advisor, providing Cloud-focused consulting services to multiple project teams and IT leaders.

● Works with the program managers, Engineers, and Architects to develop high-level scope, schedules, and budget.

● Supports Costco’s architecture ecosystem by working with Enterprise Architecture, Security Architects, and Network Architects to ensure security by design.

● Reviews current Cloud strategies, architecture, and road-maps for alignment with applicable industry best practices and implementing, evangelizing, and supporting updates.

● Mentors and trains members of the Cloud team, fostering knowledge sharing and professional development.

● Develops executive level dashboards and presentations and facilitates sessions to ensure Costco executives understand current and future state of Cloud.

REQUIRED

● 10 years’ experience as a Senior Architect for a multi cloud environment, leveraging DevOps and IaC technologies.

● 4+ years’ as an Engineer supporting full lifecycle of a product from design to operational support.

● 3 years’ Enterprise level experience designing and deploying cloud platforms and services that allow for automated application onboarding in multi cloud platforms, adhering to automated deployments with approved tools.

● Demonstrated expertise in associated-technical disciplines such as infrastructure, networking, security, and enterprise data.

● Practical experience and strong understanding of cloud service models that include IaaS, PaaS, FaaS, SaaS.

● Extensive knowledge and experience in large enterprise cloud adoption, particularly within one or more major cloud service providers including Azure and Google Cloud Platform.

● Experience in designing and deploying cloud security standards and patterns to ensure compliance with relevant regulatory requirements and industry frameworks, such as GDPR, PCI, HIPAA, and ISO 27001.

● Hands-on experience in full-stack cloud automation, development, and deployment using Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

● Hands-on experience in deploying declarative configurations using control planes and Kubernetes provider plugins.

● Experience scaling Terraform adoption and utilization (IaC) across multiple app development teams using HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL)

● Proven experience designing and implementing cloud strategies and solutions, ensuring they are secure by design.

● Demonstrated ability to work in agile environments focused on fast and continual value delivery.

● Excellent understanding of the latest cloud architectures, patterns, and related standards.

● Experience with developing PoC’s (Java, C#, GoLang).

We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, health benefits - medical/dental/vision/hearing aid/pharmacy/behavioral health/employee assistance, health care reimbursement account, dependent care assistance plan, short-term disability and long-term disability insurance, AD&D insurance, life insurance, 401(k), stock purchase plan to eligible employees.

Costco is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace. Costco is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard of race, national origin, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, protected veteran status, disability, age, or any other legally protected status. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request to IT-Recruiting@costco.com

If hired, you will be required to provide proof of authorization to work in the United States.

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