Senior GCP Operations Architect

About this role

540 is seeking a Senior GCP Operations Architect to support a mission-critical aviation platform that helps enable 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.

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.

Location: Remote within the continental United States
Citizenship & Clearance Requirement: Per client requirements, 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)
540 Internal Thrive Level: Senior Platform Engineer

WHY 540?

540 is a forward-thinking company that the government turns to in order to #getshitdone. We don’t just talk about innovation – we deliver it. We break down barriers, build impactful technology, and solve mission-critical problems.

HOW YOU’LL DRIVE IMPACT

• 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

• 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

REQUIRED SKILLS & EXPERIENCE

• 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…