Cloud engineer Jobs in Chicago, IL

Job Description

About the Role

We are looking for a Principal Cloud Engineer to serve as the senior-most technical authority for how we design, build, and operate infrastructure across AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. This is a hands-on, infrastructure-focused role for an engineer who has spent more than a decade in production environments and now sets the standards, patterns, and reference architectures that entire teams build on. You will own the hardest architecture decisions, act as the final technical escalation point, and multiply the impact of every engineer around you.

You will work across internal platforms and client-facing engagements, shaping solutions from pre-sales through production. This is a principal-level individual contributor role and design authority. Your leverage comes from the standards you set, the accelerators you build, and the technical direction you drive across the practice, not from managing people.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical authority. Act as the design authority for multi-cloud infrastructure across AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. Own the hardest architecture decisions and serve as the final escalation point for production-critical problems across engagements.
• Standards and reference architectures. Define the firm-wide standards, patterns, and reference architectures for landing zones, networking, identity, and workload platforms that every team builds on. Set account, subscription, and project structure, environment separation, and identity boundaries as defaults.
• Infrastructure as Code. Own the IaC standard for the practice. Build the reusable, modular Terraform and the module library that other engineers adopt by default, and govern state, versioning, and drift at scale.
• Container platforms. Set the standard for running Kubernetes in production (EKS, GKE, AKS), including networking, autoscaling, workload isolation, and day-2 operations. Own container registries and artifact promotion (ECR, ACR, Artifact Registry) and golden image pipelines (cloud-init, image bake) for consistent, hardened builds.
• Solutioning and pre-sales. Shape proposals and estimates, lead technical discovery, and represent the firm as the senior cloud voice in client and executive conversations.
• Delivery automation. Build and harden CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation that move code to production safely and repeatably.
• Reliability. Establish observability, SLOs, and incident response practices. Lead root cause analysis and drive permanent fixes rather than repeated firefighting.
• Security and compliance. Define the cloud security and compliance posture: identity and least-privilege access, secrets management, network segmentation, encryption, and policy as code.
• Cost and efficiency. Drive cost visibility and optimization (FinOps) across accounts, projects, and clouds.
• Leadership and mentorship. Raise the technical bar across the practice. Mentor and grow senior engineers, shape the hiring bar, and lead design reviews.
• Accelerators. Build the accelerators and reference implementations that cut delivery time and raise quality across every engagement.

Qualifications

Qualifications

Must Have

• 12+ years in cloud infrastructure, DevOps, or platform engineering, with deep production ownership and a record of setting technical direction.
• Deep, hands-on expertise across all three of AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, or mastery of two with strong production experience in the third.
• Expert-level Infrastructure as Code, especially Terraform, with patterns and module libraries you have personally established as the standard across multiple teams.
• Production Kubernetes experience (EKS, GKE, or AKS), including day-2 operations and troubleshooting.
• Strong CI/CD design experience (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Azure DevOps, Jenkins, or similar).
• Advanced scripting and automation in Python, Bash, and/or PowerShell.
• Deep networking fundamentals across clouds: VPC and VNet design, DNS, load balancing, hybrid connectivity, and private-by-default access patterns (PrivateLink, Private Service Connect, Shared VPC, and multi-account or multi-project connectivity).
• Strong grounding in cloud security and identity (IAM, RBAC, secrets management, encryption).
• A track record as a design authority and top escalation point, and of mentoring senior engineers and setting standards others adopt.
• Experience leading technical solutioning or pre-sales in a client-facing or consulting environment.
• Strong written and spoken English communication skills, including with executive audiences.

Nice to Have

• Multi-account or multi-project landing zone design (AWS Control Tower, GCP organization policy, Azure Landing Zones).
• GitOps and progressive delivery (ArgoCD, Flux), and service mesh experience.
• Policy as code (OPA, Sentinel) and compliance frameworks (SOC 2, FedRAMP, HIPAA).
• FinOps and large-scale cost optimization.
• VMware and hybrid or private cloud experience.

Additional Information

What It's Like to Work Here

At Resultant, we are driven by purpose—partnering with clients to take on their toughest challenges and creating outcomes that make a real difference. Success here means lasting impact, not just delivered projects. We work as collaborative experts, leaning into complexity with confidence and humility, asking smart questions, sharing ideas freely, and combining our diverse expertise to turn challenges into clear, transformative solutions. We make our outcomes visible by sharing results, stories, and lessons learned, because growth happens through shared experience.

Accountability & Ownership

Resultant offers a flexible, high-trust environment, paired with a shared commitment to accountability:

• Take ownership of your work from start to finish and deliver on your commitments to clients and coworkers
• Communicate proactively, especially when priorities shift
• Focus on outcomes, follow-through, and measurable impact
• Show up where it matters, in person or virtually, when it strengthens relationships or results
• Do the small things brilliantly: respond timely, stay organized, and follow through to build trust

We trust each other to own our work and deliver exceptional results. Flexibility means autonomy paired with accountability: the freedom to work in ways that fit your life, balanced with the reliability our clients and coworkers count on.

Is Resultant the right spot for you?

You may thrive here if you bring curiosity and a consulting mindset to every challenge, take ownership of your growth, and give and receive feedback with intention. If you're energized by bold ideas, continuous learning, and investing in the people around you, this is your place. At Resultant, we show up for each other, own our outcomes, and build leaders who create lasting impact for our clients, our communities, and each other.

Equal Opportunity Employer

We embrace AI across everything we do, and that includes how you prepare for this interview. Feel free to use AI tools to research the role, practice your responses, and put your best foot forward. What matters to us is getting to know the real you — how you think, how you communicate, and what you genuinely bring to the table. Our interviews are designed to go deeper than any polished answer, so come curious and come as yourself without the support of an AI tool during our conversation.