GCP Architect

Job Description: Google Cloud Architect (Hands-On) Type: Full Time Seniority: Senior/Staff (Hands-on) Team: Platform/Cloud Engineering Our client is looking for a hands-on Google Cloud Architect to design and build a scalable, secure, and resilient GCP foundation. You'll own the core landing zone architecture (network, org structure, IAM, guardrails), lead reference implementations, and partner with security, platform, data, and app teams to evolve our cloud operating model. What You'll Do: Design & Build the GCP FoundationDefine organization structure (folders, projects), naming/labeling, resource hierarchy, billing and quotas.Implement VPC networks, Private Service Connect, Cloud NAT, and secure ingress/egress patterns.Establish network segmentation, hierarchical firewall policies, perimeter controls (VPC SC), and DNS strategy. Identity & Access (IAM) at Scale: Build least-privilege IAM with custom roles, service accounts, workload identity federation, and group-based access.Implement policy-as-code and Organization Policies for consistent guardrails.Fault-Tolerant, Well-Architected DesignsArchitect multi-zone and multi-region patterns for GKE/Compute/Serverless; DR/RTO/RPO strategies; data durability and backup policies.Create resilience playbooks (circuit breakers, retries, blue/green & canary, zonal/region failover). Observability & Operations: Implement a logging, metrics, and tracing stack with Cloud Logging/Monitoring, uptime checks, SLOs/SLIs, alerting, dashboards.Define golden signals, distributed tracing standards, error budgets, and operational runbooks. Project Design/Build/Management: Lead project templates and blueprints (Terraform/Deployment Manager), CI/CD integration, and environment promotion workflows.Run architecture reviews, threat modeling, and cost/perf trade-off analyses. Enablement & Governance: Stand up CICD + IaC pipelines, artifact management, and baseline security scanning.Partner with SecOps to embed CSPM and continuous compliance (CIS, NIST, SOC 2).Mentor engineers; publish reference architectures and how-to guides. What Good Looks Like (6 Month Outcomes): A production-ready GCP landing zone with repeatable project factory patterns.Shared services and network perimeters in place; clear service-to-service communication patterns.Observability baselines (SLOs, golden dashboards, alert routing) across key services.Documented DR patterns with tested failover runbooks.70-90% of new infra provisioned via TerraformMeasurable improvements in security posture, cost visibility, and time-to-environment. Required Qualifications: 7+ years designing and building on public cloud (3+ on Google Cloud Platform).Deep expertise in Google Network, Compute, AI, Storage and other services.Strong IAM design at enterprise scale: org policies, custom roles, SA lifecycle, workload identity, secrets management.Proven project design/build/management: templating (Terraform), CI/CD integration, environment strategy (dev/test/stage/prod).Observability: Cloud Logging/Monitoring, tracing (OpenTelemetry), SLO/SLI design, alerting strategy.Fault tolerance & reliability engineering: multi-zone/region designs, DR strategies, backup/restore, chaos/failover testing.Hands-on with Terraform, Git, CI/CD (Cloud Build/GitHub Actions/Jenkins), and one scripting language (Python/Go/Bash).Strong communicator who can lead design docs, ADRs, and cross-team design reviews. Nice-to-Have: Certifications: Google Professional Cloud Architect, Professional Cloud Network Engineer, Professional DevOps Engineer.Experience with GKE (autoscaling, node pools, HPA/VPA), Anthos, or serverless (Cloud Run/Functions).Security tools: Security Command Center, DLP, KMS/HSM.Data-plane familiarity: Pub/Sub, BigQuery, Dataflow, Spanner/Cloud SQL high availability patterns.FinOps: budget governance, labels/tags, cost allocation and optimization. Tech Stack You'll Touch: Core GCP: Resource Manager, IAM, VPC/Shared VPC, Cloud DNS, Cloud NAT, Cloud Load Balancing, PSC, Interconnect/VPN, Org Policies, VPC SCCompute/Platform: GKE, Cloud Run, GCE, MIGs, Autoscaling, Cloud Build, Artifact RegistryData/Resilience: Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, Spanner, Pub/Sub, Backup/DR toolsObservability: Cloud Logging/Monitoring, Trace, Error Reporting, OpenTelemetryIaC & Tooling: Terraform, Git, Policy-as-Code (OPA/Conftest), Secret Manager Salary/Rate: $85-$100/HR (depends on experience level). This is a contract position with candidates expected to work 40 hours/ week. About Us Peterson Technology Partners (PTP) is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to creating a transparent, inclusive, and human-centered hiring experience. For more than 28 years, PTP has operated as one of the top IT staffing and recruiting firms in the USA—built on trust, long-term partnerships, and technical excellence. Based in the Chicago suburb of Park Ridge, IL, our team of more than 500 employees and consultants is dedicated to: Helping every client make the best hiring decisions possibleMatching professionals with the right IT jobs and career opportunities As part of that commitment, we believe in providing clear information about how our hiring technologies work and how your data is used. The following section outlines our AI-assisted interview process and your rights as a candidate. AI-Assisted Interview Experience (Pete & Gabi – Rebecca): To provide a consistent, fair, and flexible experience for all candidates, we use AI-assisted tools to support parts of the interview process. This includes our proprietary AI platform Pete & Gabi, which includes AI recruiter Rebecca. These AI hiring tools help us: Conduct recorded video interviewsTranscribe interviewsSummarize candidate responsesGenerate job-related insightsStreamline communication and scheduling Please note that: The AI does NOT make hiring decisions; all decisions are made by our human recruiters, hiring managers, or client partners.The AI does not evaluate facial expressions, emotions, or physical traits; it is used only to support fairness, consistency, and efficiency. If you prefer a non-AI interview format, we will gladly provide an alternative. 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Our Commitment: + For more than 28 years, PTP has focused on putting people first—candidates, consultants, employees, and clients. We’re committed to a hiring process that is: TransparentCompliantEquitablePowered by innovative technology that enhances—not replaces—human judgment Welcome to the future of hiring at Peterson Technology Partners. We’re excited to learn more about you. Equal Employment Opportunity: + Peterson Technology Partners is an Equal Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic.