Principal Engineer I - Cloud Automations Engineer at Western Alliance Bank in Columbus, OH

Job description

Job Title: Principal Engineer I - Cloud Automations Engineer Location: OH - Columbus What you'll do: The Cloud Automations Engineer is a senior technical leader responsible for defining and driving the strategic technical direction of automating the organization’s tasks across multiple cloud environments. This role serves as the highest-level engineering authority for cloud architecture, engineering standards, automation patterns, and platform design, ensuring cloud automations are secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned with business and regulatory requirements. The Cloud Automations Principal Engineer partners closely with Enterprise Architecture, Security, Application teams, System Integration team, and Operations to establish automated processes within 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 and automation operating models. 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 solutions consistently and at enterprise scale. Serve as the principal technical authority for cloud automation 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 automation initiatives, including migrations, platform modernization efforts, and integration of cloud services with on-premises and third-party environments. Drive the organization’s automation strategy and roadmap, ensuring technical investments support long-term business priorities, operational resilience, and regulatory obligations. Establish and mature automation-first engineering practices using, python, PowerShell, Infrastructure as Code, policy-as-code, CI/CD, and self-service platform capabilities. Partner with Cloud Operations and service owners to improve business processes with automation while maintaining 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 automation 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. Create and maintain SDLC documentation, 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 automation designs align with enterprise control requirements and regulatory expectations. Work with finance, product, and engineering leadership to support cost-aware automation 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. What you'll need: 8+ years of progressive experience delivering infrastructure automation, configuration management, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions at enterprise scale. Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, or