Solutions Architect IV

Kforce's client in Maryland Heightsm MO is seeking an experienced Platform Architect to design, build, and evolve the architecture that supports our application deployments. This role is responsible for defining deployment patterns for public cloud platforms (preferably Google Cloud Platform and Amazon Web Services) as well as our internally managed Kubernetes platform. The ideal candidate combines deep infrastructure and platform expertise with a strong understanding of service mesh, observability, and cloud-native design principles, helping ensure our applications are deployed reliably, securely, and at scale. Responsibilities:

• Design and implement application deployment architectures for public cloud platforms, with a preference for GCP and AWS
• Architect, configure, and maintain deployments on the organization's internal Kubernetes platform, leveraging native Kubernetes constructs (e.g., Deployments, StatefulSets, CRDs, operators, and controllers) rather than relying on abstraction layers, and configuring Istio service mesh for traffic management, security, and observability
• Define and enforce best practices for containerization, orchestration, and cloud-native application design
• Partner with development teams to design scalable, resilient deployment pipelines and infrastructure patterns
• Implement and maintain observability and monitoring solutions using Datadog, including dashboards, alerting, and APM instrumentation
• Evaluate and recommend cloud services, tools, and technologies to improve platform reliability, scalability, and cost efficiency
• Collaborate with security, networking, and operations teams to ensure deployments meet compliance, security, and performance standards
• Troubleshoot complex platform and infrastructure issues spanning public cloud and on-premises Kubernetes environments
• Create and maintain technical documentation, architecture diagrams, and operational runbooks

Requirements:

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience
• Proven experience designing and implementing application deployments on public cloud platforms, preferably GCP and/or AWS
• Strong, hands-on expertise leveraging Kubernetes natively - deep fluency with core Kubernetes APIs and objects, cluster architecture, workload management, networking, custom resource definitions (CRDs), operators/controllers, and troubleshooting, without dependence on managed abstraction layers
• Strong working knowledge of Istio (or a comparable service mesh), including traffic routing, mTLS, resiliency patterns, and observability
• Hands-on experience with Datadog or a comparable observability and monitoring platform
• Solid understanding of containerization technologies (e.g., Docker) and CI/CD pipelines
• Experience architecting for scalability, high availability, and disaster recovery
• Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills across distributed systems
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to work cross-functionally across engineering, security, and operations teams

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with Java and Spring Boot application development
• Experience designing and implementing RESTful APIs
• Relevant cloud certifications (e.g., GCP Professional Cloud Architect, AWS Certified Solutions Architect)
• Experience with infrastructure-as-code tools such as Terraform or Helm
• Experience with GitOps practices and tools (e.g., ArgoCD, Flux)