Senior GCP Operations Architect

540 is seeking a Senior GCP Operations Architect to support a mission-critical aviation platform that enables the safe and efficient operation of the nation's airspace. The platform modernizes how time-sensitive safety information is managed and distributed through secure, near-real-time data exchange.

Location: Remote within the continental United States
Citizenship & Clearance Requirement: Candidates must be U.S. Citizens and currently hold or be eligible to obtain and maintain an FAA Public Trust
Education Requirement: Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science or related field (preferred)

About the role

Working alongside Google technical advisors and customer operations teams, you will provide architectural guidance and day-two operational expertise across GCP infrastructure, security, resiliency, automation, and DevSecOps. This highly visible role requires a proactive technical leader who can resolve complex issues, strengthen operational readiness, and help ensure the reliability and availability of a platform that directly supports aviation safety.

Responsibilities

• Provide expert guidance on the architecture and operation of GCP networking, compute, security, storage, and supporting platform services
• Partner with customer operations teams to identify and introduce new tools, operational patterns, and cloud best practices that improve team productivity, platform reliability, and operational efficiency
• Serve as a primary point of contact for infrastructure and operations questions and technical escalations, providing Tier 3 troubleshooting across cloud infrastructure, Terraform deployments, and DevSecOps pipelines
• Quickly develop expertise and take ownership of unfamiliar technical or operational areas, providing guidance to customer and delivery teams as new challenges emerge
• Participate in Agile delivery ceremonies and technical forums, including daily stand-ups, sprint planning and reviews, technical syncs, scrum-of-scrums, operational reviews, postmortems, and technical retrospectives
• Review system metrics and logs to identify performance bottlenecks, stability concerns, and emerging risks; support root cause analysis and define sustainable, long-term remediation actions
• Assess and strengthen day-two operational readiness, including troubleshooting procedures, escalation paths, support-team preparedness, backup and recovery strategies, disaster recovery protocols, and high-availability configurations
• Provide guidance on Terraform module development, state management, infrastructure automation, and CI/CD integration, and review GitOps and DevSecOps workflows to troubleshoot critical pipeline and deployment issues
• Support release-management activities, including the application and rollback of database releases
• Review and guide the development of runbooks, SOPs, troubleshooting materials, and other operational artifacts to ensure they are accurate, complete, consistent, and aligned with the current architecture and recommended practices
• Review the Technical Design Document every two weeks, advise customer stakeholders on required revisions and document governance, and develop supporting materials for technical and architecture reviews
• Conduct weekly office hours for Infrastructure, DevSecOps, and Release Management processes
• Engage with the customer's Change Control Board and Architecture Review Board to evaluate proposed configuration and architectural changes
• Research relevant GCP services and architectural components to inform technical recommendations and customer decision-making
• Maintain accurate and detailed activity, status, and task information in Jira
• Reduce technical and operational ambiguity by clarifying requirements, establishing a path forward, and maintaining momentum when requirements or direction are not fully defined
• Demonstrate proactive ownership and confident technical leadership across the broader project, helping maintain architectural cohesion, operational standards, and delivery quality while representing Google and 540 in customer-facing engagements

Requirements

• 8+ years of relevant experience
• Extensive experience designing, operating, or supporting production environments in Google Cloud
• Strong knowledge of GCP networking, compute, storage, identity, access management, and core security services
• Experience translating cloud architecture into practical day-two operations and support processes
• Hands-on experience with Terraform, including reusable modules, remote state management, deployment troubleshooting, and CI/CD integration
• Experience supporting GitOps, CI/CD, or DevSecOps workflows in production environments
• Experience with infrastructure monitoring, logging, system-health analysis, and operational risk identification
• Strong understanding of high availability, disaster recovery, backup and recovery, and platform resiliency
• Experience conducting root cause analysis and developing long-term corrective and preventive actions
• Ability to troubleshoot complex cloud infrastructure and deployment issues at a Tier 3 level
• Experience creating and reviewing technical design documents, runbooks, SOPs, troubleshooting guides, and operational procedures
• Experience supporting release-management and rollback processes
• Working knowledge of Agile delivery practices and task-management tools such as Jira
• Strong customer-facing communication, facilitation, and technical advisory skills
• Ability to communicate architectural concepts and operational recommendations to both technical teams and customer leadership
• Proactive ownership mindset with the confidence to identify risks, recommend improvements, and drive issues toward resolution

Nice to have

• Google Cloud professional-level certification
• Experience supporting mission-critical government or regulated cloud environments
• Experience with Apigee architecture, deployment, or operations
• Experience participating in formal Change Control Board or Architecture Review Board processes
• Experience supporting database release and rollback activities
• Familiarity with site reliability engineering and production operations practices
• Experience supporting large-scale modernization or cloud-transformation programs
• Familiarity with aviation, transportation, or other high-availability operational systems

Benefits

• Flexible PTO + all Federal holidays off
• Health, dental and vision insurance plans
• Flexible Spending Account (FSA)
• 401k with employer match
• Company-sponsored life insurance, short- and long-term disability
• Professional development (training, certifications, conferences)
• Paid cloud developer accounts
• Referral bonuses
• HQ office perks (parking / metro reimbursement, nitro coffee & lunches)
• Annual social events (540 Week, hackathon, charity golf tournament, etc.)
• Access to 540's Washington Capitals & Nationals tickets