DevOps Solution Architect

The architect defines application delivery patterns, guides engineering teams, identifies gaps between application needs and platform capabilities, and serves as a technical bridge between application teams and enterprise DevSecOps/platform organizations. Knowledge of API gateways, service mesh, container networking, cloud-native security, SAST, DAST, SCA, SBOM, signing, provenance, and software supply-chain security.

DevOps Solution Architect Overview
We are seeking an experienced DevOps Solution Architect to join the Application Architecture & Reliability (AAR) team. This role provides deep DevOps and DevSecOps architecture expertise from the application architecture and engineering perspective. Enterprise DevSecOps platforms, tooling, standards, and governance are owned by other technology organizations;this role ensures AAR and application teams have the architectural expertise needed to effectively consume those capabilities and influence their evolution. The architect defines application delivery patterns, guides engineering teams, identifies gaps between application needs and platform capabilities, and serves as a technical bridge between application teams and enterprise DevSecOps/platform organizations.

Deep experience with GitLab and GitLab CI/CD is strongly preferred. Electric utility industry experience is beneficial but not required.
Key Responsibilities
DevOps & DevSecOps Architecture

• Define DevOps and DevSecOps architecture patterns for enterprise application delivery
• Translate centrally defined platform capabilities, security requirements, and governance controls into practical application delivery architectures
• Define application-level CI/CD patterns, standards, reusable approaches, and technical guardrails
• Ensure application architecture considers build, test, deployment, configuration, operations, and supportability throughout the software lifecycle
• Evaluate delivery architecture decisions and document trade-offs, risks, constraints, and dependencies

GitLab & CI/CD

• Provide deep technical expertise in GitLab and GitLab CI/CD
• Define patterns for repositories, branching, merge requests, pipelines, runners, artifacts, packages, container images, and release workflows
• Design scalable CI/CD pipeline structures and reusable pipeline components/templates
• Define appropriate pipeline stages, quality gates, approvals, environment controls, and promotion strategies
• Guide teams on pipeline performance, reliability, maintainability, security, and troubleshooting while working within standards established by enterprise platform owners

Application Delivery & OpenShift

• Define deployment and release patterns, including rolling deployment, blue/green deployment, canary release, feature flags, and automated rollback
• Guide application teams in designing build and deployment processes appropriate to application criticality and architecture
• Establish patterns for environment configuration, dependency management, artifact promotion, and release management
• Provide architecture guidance for Kubernetes and Red Hat OpenShift application deployment
• Guide teams on container image design, registries, resource configuration, health checks, autoscaling, configuration, secrets, deployment manifests, and Helm or equivalent packaging

Infrastructure as Code, GitOps & Security

• Establish application-facing patterns for Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and configuration automation using technologies such as Terraform, Ansible, and Helm
• Define GitOps patterns where appropriate, including integration with technologies such as Argo CD
• Define patterns for embedding SAST, DAST, software composition analysis, dependency scanning, secrets detection, container scanning, and other security controls into CI/CD pipelines
• Establish architecture patterns for artifact integrity, provenance, SBOM, signing, and software supply-chain security where required
• Guide application teams on secure management of credentials, secrets, certificates, tokens, and service identities

Reliability & Cross-Organizational Architecture

• Incorporate application reliability and operational readiness into DevOps architecture, including automated health validation, deployment verification, rollback, and post-deployment testing
• Ensure delivery solutions integrate appropriately with enterprise logging, monitoring, metrics, tracing, and alerting capabilities
• Serve as an AAR subject-matter expert for DevOps/DevSecOps architecture
• Partner closely with organizations responsible for enterprise DevSecOps platforms, GitLab, OpenShift, cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and related capabilities
• Represent application architecture requirements in platform and tooling discussions, and identify gaps between application needs and enterprise platform capabilities
• Maintain clear boundaries between platform ownership/governance and application architecture responsibility

Engineering Enablement

• Provide technical guidance to application architects, technical leads, and engineering teams
• Develop reference architectures, reusable pipeline patterns, implementation guidance, and architecture standards
• Conduct architecture/design reviews focused on software delivery, deployment, security, and operational readiness
• Assess existing application delivery practices and identify modernization opportunities
• Help increase DevSecOps competency across AAR and application engineering teams

Required Qualifications

• Significant experience in DevOps, DevSecOps, platform engineering, software engineering, or cloud engineering, including architecture or senior technical leadership responsibilities
• Strong understanding of enterprise CI/CD architecture, Git-based software delivery, and modern software delivery practices
• Experience designing CI/CD pipelines and reusable automation patterns
• Strong knowledge of containers, Kubernetes-based application delivery, infrastructure as code, and configuration automation
• Strong understanding of application architecture and the software development lifecycle
• Experience integrating automated testing, security scanning, quality controls, and governance requirements into CI/CD
• Understanding of identity, secrets management, networking, application security, artifact repositories, container registries, dependency management, and software supply-chain concepts
• Ability to troubleshoot complex issues spanning applications, pipelines, platforms, infrastructure, and security controls
• Ability to influence technical outcomes across teams and organizations without direct ownership of the underlying platforms

Preferred Qualifications

• Deep hands-on experience with GitLab and GitLab CI/CD, including reusable pipeline components and runner architectures
• Strong experience with Red Hat OpenShift and/or Kubernetes
• Experience with Terraform, Ansible, Helm, Argo CD, or comparable technologies and GitOps delivery models
• Experience with JFrog Artifactory and Xray
• Experience with AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or IBM Cloud, and secrets-management platforms such as HashiCorp Vault or equivalent
• Experience working with Nginx, Apache HTTPD, and Tomcat web application services
• Knowledge of API gateways, service mesh, container networking, cloud-native security, SAST, DAST, SCA, SBOM, signing, provenance, and software supply-chain security
• Familiarity with SRE concepts, including SLIs/SLOs, observability, reliability engineering, and production readiness
• Experience in large, complex, highly regulated, utility, energy, or critical-infrastructure environments (utility experience is not required)
• Deep understanding of build automation and deployment automation for Node.Js, Python, .NET, and Java applications

Desired Characteristics

• Strong enough technically to engage as a peer with enterprise DevSecOps and platform engineering teams
• Application-oriented mindset rather than a narrow focus on infrastructure or tool administration
• Able to distinguish between platform problems, application architecture problems, and delivery-process problems
• Comfortable challenging standards constructively when application requirements expose gaps or unintended consequences
• Focused on automation, standardization, reliability, security, developer experience, and cross-organizational collaboration