Cloud Platform Architect

At Motiva, our employees' energy, passion, and dedication to excellence are what make us who we are and what allows us to generate energy that makes a house a home, gets us from point A to point B, and enables our health and wellbeing. We invest in every aspect of our employees' lives because, at Motiva, our people matter.

Headquartered in Houston, Texas, Motiva refines, distributes and markets petroleum products throughout the Americas. The company's Port Arthur Manufacturing Complex in Port Arthur, TX, is comprised of North America's largest refinery with a total throughput of 720,000 barrels per day, the largest base oil plant in the western hemisphere, and an integrated chemical plant. Under exclusive long-term brand licenses with Shell and Phillips 66 (for the 76® brand), Motiva's commercial operations supply more than 12 billion gallons of fuel to customers annually. Motiva is wholly owned by Aramco, one of the world's largest integrated energy and chemicals companies.

Position Overview:

Motiva is seeking a visionary and experienced

Cloud Platform Architect

to lead the design and guide the implementation of our new Internal Developer Platform (IDP). In this pivotal role, you will be instrumental in transforming how our technical teams build and deploy products by creating a standardized, self-service platform that enhances developer experience (DevEx) and accelerates our time-to-market for new innovations and modernization of existing applications.

📍This is an in-office role located at our Corporate Headquarters in

Downtown Houston, TX

.

Responsibilities:

- Design the Internal Developer Platform (IDP): Lead the architectural design, development, and implementation of our IDP, treating it as a core product. This includes defining the platform's capabilities, selecting appropriate tools, and ensuring a seamless, self-service experience for developers.

- Simplify Infrastructure Provisioning: Abstract the complexities of underlying infrastructure (compute, storage, networking, security) through the IDP, enabling development teams to quickly and reliably provision resources.

- Enhance Developer Experience (DevEx): Champion the needs of our developers by creating "golden paths" and standardized tool chains that reduce cognitive load, automate common tasks, and improve overall productivity and satisfaction.

- Strategic Alignment: Collaborate closely with Enterprise Architecture to ensure the IDP aligns with our overall technical strategy, standards, guidelines, and best practices. Ensure the platform supports and evolves with our existing Cloud Strategy and Roadmap.

- Tooling and Workload Analysis: Analyze existing toolsets, workloads, and legacy systems to identify opportunities for integration, modernization, and optimization within the IDP ecosystem.

- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work with engineering teams, delivery managers, project managers, and other stakeholders to gather requirements, advocate for platform adoption, and ensure the IDP meets their evolving needs.

- Technical Leadership & Mentorship: Provide technical guidance and thought leadership in cloud-native architecture, DevOps principles, and platform engineering. Mentor other engineers on best practices.

- Continuous Improvement: Establish metrics to monitor IDP adoption, performance, and developer satisfaction. Continuously iterates on the platform based on feedback and emerging technologies.

- Security and Compliance: Embed security best practices and ensure compliance requirements are met within the IDP design and automated workflows.

Experience and Qualifications:

Required Education and Experience:

- Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent practical experience. - 7+ years' experience in a technical domain and/or Information Technology-related field.

- Proven ability to lead technical teams, mentor junior engineers, and oversee the successful delivery of complex projects.

- Proven experience as a Cloud Architect, Platform Engineer, or similar role

- Deep understanding of cloud computing platforms (e.g.,

Azure

or AWS) and their services (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS).

- Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools (e.g.,

Terraform,

CloudFormation, Ansible).

- Strong knowledge of CI/CD principles and tools (e.g.,

Azure DevOps

, Jenkins, GitLab CI, ArgoCD).

- Experience with various programming, scripting, markup languages (e.g., Python, Go, Bash, Powershell, YAML).

- Excellent understanding of networking, security principles, and identity management in cloud environments.

- Demonstrated ability to analyze existing systems, identify pain points, and design effective technical solutions.

- Strong collaborative and communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to diverse audiences.

- Proven experience taking team-driven initiatives from concept to delivery

Preferred Education and Experience:

- Relevant certifications in cloud architecture (e.g., Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect, AWS Certified Solutions Architect,) are a plus.

- Proven Experience building and managing an Internal Developer Platform "as a Product."

- Knowledge of service mesh technologies (e.g., Istio, Linkerd).

- Experience with GitOps principles and tools.

- Contributions to open-source projects related to cloud-native technologies or developer platforms.

- Experience with containerization (Docker, Kubernetes) and orchestration technologies.

- Solid understanding of microservices architecture, API design, and event-driven systems.

- Familiarity with monitoring, logging, and observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack, Datadog).