Principal Architect (Remote, US)

Join Lumen as a Principal Architect to lead the technical vision for our Lumen Connect platform—a fully remote position serving the United States on a full-time basis. This role merges deep technical leadership with strategic program management, positioning you at the forefront of infrastructure modernization and AI-enabled development.

The Opportunity

Lumen Connect delivers the mission-critical connectivity that enterprises and institutions depend on every day. We're reimagining this platform for the AI-powered era, and we're seeking a Principal Architect who can drive bold technical decisions at scale. You'll partner with engineering, product, and business teams across the organization to shape how we achieve superior performance, resilience, and scalability on AWS. This role puts you in command of architectural vision—where your choices directly influence platform capabilities, customer experience, and competitive advantage.

Your Responsibilities

• Architect the technical evolution of Lumen Connect, modernizing legacy infrastructure while embracing cloud-native design principles for reliability and performance
• Design data-driven backend systems that accelerate development velocity, reduce operational friction, and enable AI-assisted feature development
• Lead large-scale projects that deliver innovative network products with cloud-native architectures and customer-grade performance
• Champion AWS cloud modernization across the organization using services including WAF, EC2, EKS, S3, and CloudFront while maintaining security and cost governance
• Oversee cross-functional technical initiatives from conception through delivery, ensuring alignment across stakeholders and dependencies
• Act as technical bridge between engineering, product, business, and external partners—surfacing risks early and maintaining transparency
• Collaborate with DevOps and site reliability teams to embed observability, fault tolerance, and operational excellence into architectural decisions
• Identify and drive performance optimizations, infrastructure cost reductions, technical debt elimination, and continuous learning initiatives
• Mentor engineers and foster knowledge-sharing practices across teams

Qualifications

Required

• Twelve or more years of professional experience with a bachelor's degree, or eight-plus years with a master's degree
• Expert-level knowledge of AWS services and cloud-native architecture patterns across AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud platforms
• Demonstrated success designing software architecture, executing cloud transformation programs, and managing complex technical projects with multiple teams and dependencies
• Production experience building applications with Java and Spring Boot framework
• Proficiency designing RESTful APIs and implementing microservices-based architectures
• Hands-on experience with relational databases (Oracle, MySQL, SQL Server) and NoSQL systems
• Experience implementing CI/CD pipelines using tools such as GitHub or Jenkins
• Working knowledge of Kubernetes and Docker container technologies
• Proficiency with HTML and CSS web standards
• Front-end development experience using JavaScript or TypeScript and modern frameworks such as Vue

Preferred

• Experience building applications using Confluent Kafka for event streaming
• GraphQL development experience
• Python programming background
• Agile or SCRUM team experience
• AWS Architecture or Project Management professional certifications

Working at CenturyLink

At Lumen, we build success on clear expectations, mutual trust, and shared accountability. We operate with urgency in an AI-focused environment while maintaining the human connection that makes great teams thrive. We reward ownership, measurable impact, and bold thinking about how connectivity powers the future.

Apply Today

To apply, complete your application directly on this page, or you'll be redirected to the employer's application platform to finish submitting there.