Protective Life · 9 hours ago
Lead Cloud Architect
United States
Full-time
Remote
Senior Level, Lead/Staff
$122K/yr - $150K/yr
8+ years expProtective is a company dedicated to helping customers navigate life’s uncertainties. They are seeking a Lead Cloud Architect to evolve their Azure cloud platform, collaborating with engineers to enhance infrastructure, refine IaC practices, and drive SRE initiatives.
FinanceFinancial ServicesInsurance
Responsibilities
Architect the Cloud Foundation: Partner with peers to refine Azure Landing Zone architectures, weaving in Networking, Security, and Enterprise Architecture needs into our secure platform. Evolve the "Secure Sandbox" for better multi-tenant isolation, compliance, and growth, including networking, monitoring, and automation. Offer senior architecture guidance for onboarding new cloud workloads
Build "Paved Roads" for Cloud Enablement: Collaborate to enhance reusable IaC modules (Bicep, ARM, Terraform) and CI/CD templates (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions). Empower app and domain teams with refined governance, security, and cost controls. Orchestrate automated builds for O365 and cloud platforms company-wide, upholding standards via Azure Policy
Drive Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Practices: Team with Operations to define SLOs/SLIs, using tools like Azure Monitor and Application Insights for advanced self-healing, remediation, and strategies (e.g., blue/green, canary). Support production with issue troubleshooting, 24/7 on-call rotation, and resolution of critical cloud incidents
Standardize Advanced Platforms: Optimize AKS and related services with peers, focusing on provisioning, scaling, observability, and security in hybrid/multi-cloud setups, including containers and Blob Storage. Shape the design, roadmap, and support for Azure and O365 applications
Foster Platform Resilience and Scalability: Engage in reviews, tuning, chaos engineering, incident response, and post-mortems to mitigate risks and boost metrics. Integrate security via Azure Defender, Sentinel, and Key Vault into DevOps. Lead disaster recovery planning and multi-site/multi-vendor operations. Apply proactive problem-solving to preempt issues and inform strategic decisions
Contribute to Team Excellence: Exchange knowledge via code reviews, troubleshooting, and sessions to mature practices. Join Agile sprints, standups, blameless post-mortems, and tech radars. Grasp development basics to build/update code for cloud maturity (e.g., Terraform, JSON, Git, Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible)
Advance DevOps and Automation: Champion CI/CD and release strategies organization-wide. Research and deploy streamlined automations; craft PowerShell/VM scripts for ops support. Integrate monitoring/config services, self-developing as needed. Engage seniors and stakeholders to promote cloud best practices
Innovate with Identity and Emerging Tech: Apply on-prem/cloud IAM expertise for Entra ID, Federation, and Azure B2C. Explore services like Azure Arc or Confidential Computing for PoCs; analyze trends in reporting and forensics for regulated compliance
Qualification
Required
8+ years in cloud engineering (5+ in Azure architecture/SRE); hands-on in production-scale environments, high-availability, and root-cause analysis
Background in Cloud Development and Architecture; experience managing projects of varying scale
Proficient in Azure essentials: Landing Zones, AKS, VMs, Container Instances, Blob Storage, VNet, Entra ID, Policy/Blueprints
Design/manage IaaS/PaaS/SaaS (Load Balancers, App Gateways, DNS, Front Door, Storage, Monitor, Security Center, Log Analytics)
IaC/CI/CD mastery (Bicep/ARM/Terraform, Azure DevOps/GitHub Actions, PowerShell/CLI); 2+ years in automation for CI/CD
SRE core: SLOs/SLIs, error budgets, observability (Azure Monitor/Prometheus/Grafana), automation (Logic Apps/Functions)
Security: Defender, Sentinel, Key Vault; IAM depth (Entra ID, AD, Azure AD DS/Connect/B2C, MFA)
Enterprise account/security models; Azure Policy implementation; Key Vault/encryption
2+ years O365 and Azure AD B2C; 2+ years Kubernetes/Docker/Containers; 3+ years Azure (Functions, API Mgmt, Blobs, VMs, SQL, Event Grid), Microservices, .NET Core, PowerApps
Large-scale distributed systems, OSes, secure configs; deep Azure/cloud knowledge
Complex system problem-solving; container/microservices; requirements-to-architecture translation
Collaborative communicator for partnerships/influence; agile/blameless culture; change/incident management
Mentor juniors; plan/manage technical implementations
Preferred
Certifications: AZ-305, AZ-500, AZ-400, CKAD/CKA; AZ-300 A plus
Industry certs encouraged
Advanced Azure: Arc, AI/ML (e.g., ML on AKS), databases (Cosmos/SQL)
Compute/Storage/Networking automation (Azure Automation/CLI/PowerShell)
Chaos tools (Gremlin/Litmus), GitOps (Flux/ArgoCD), Ansible; regulated envs (HIPAA/GDPR/SOX)
Open-source/internal tooling contributions
Bachelor's in CS/Engineering (or equivalent) strongly preferred
Benefits
Comprehensive health, dental and vision insurance
Mental health benefits
Employee assistance program
Paid time off
Paid parental leave
Short-term disability
Cultural observance day
Contributions to healthcare accounts
Pension plan
401(k) plan with Company matching
ProHealth Rewards
Company
Protective Life
Protective is a holding company, whose subsidiaries provide financial services
1001-5000 employees
H1B Sponsorship
Protective Life has a track record of offering H1B sponsorships. Please note that this does not
guarantee sponsorship for this specific role. Below presents additional info for your
reference. (Data Powered by US Department of Labor)
Distribution of Different Job Fields Receiving Sponsorship
Represents job field similar to this job
Trends of Total Sponsorships
2025 (1)
2024 (2)
2023 (3)
2022 (1)
2020 (3)
Funding
Current Stage
Public CompanyTotal Funding
unknown2014-06-04Acquired
2002-10-04IPO
Leadership Team
Richard Bielen
President and Chief Executive Officer
Paul Wells
Chief Financial Officer
Recent News
Business Wire
2026-01-05
Company data provided by crunchbase