SUMMARY/JOB PURPOSE:

The Associate Principal Engineer – Cloud Platform will support the design and creation of cloud-based products and services to meet the technology needs of Exelixis.   This position will help define and design our cloud platform, which includes cloud automation tools and standards, CI/CD pipelines, DevOps tooling and AWS account provisioning automation.  This position will also work with application support teams to re-define the interface between our cloud platform products and application installation and configuration processes. 

ESSENTIAL DUTIES/RESPONSIBILITIES:

Product Strategy & Product Road Map:

• Supports the translation of overall direction and strategy and communicates across organizational levels and functions.
• Works toward long-range goals and objectives.
• Assignments are primarily self-initiated.
• Understands key business processes and business areas.
• Acts as resource and provides direction to others.
• Helps define and evolve the enterprise data and analytics platform strategy and roadmap, with a focus on governed data access, reusable data products, self-service enablement, and AI readiness.

Product Development & Delivery:

• Guides the successful completion of major initiatives or programs and leads large complex projects.
• Refine end-to-end development processes, from ideation through CI/CD, security scanning, and production monitoring.
• Determine and pursue courses of action necessary to obtain desired results.
• Work on unusually complex technical problems and provide solutions which are highly innovative and ingenious.
• Develops and applies complex and often long-term strategies on specific projects.
• Act as the technical expert to be sought for guidance on new technology direction.
• Lead the architecture and delivery of core data platform capabilities, including ingestion, transformation, metadata, governed access, data quality, and analytics-ready data layers.
• Ensure platform capabilities are built for long-term scale, reuse, governance, and AI enablement from day one.

Stakeholder Management & Cross-Functional Collaboration:

• Translates overall direction and strategy and communicates across organizational levels, to influence executives when needed.
• Leads strategic initiatives and ensure successful executions.
• Act as organization spokesperson on advanced projects and/or programs.
• Acts as advisor to management and customers on advanced technical research studies and applications.
• Interacts with senior external personnel on significant technical matters often requiring coordination between organizations.
• Partners closely with platform engineering, governance, security, and domain teams to define platform standards and scalable implementation patterns.
• Helps align business, data, and technical stakeholders around a common platform vision and architecture.

Operational Excellence, Quality & Compliance:

• Own the oversight of documentation of infrastructure and work instructions for systems and applications.
• Develop approaches and implement solutions to mitigate future incidents.
• Ensure that completed work delivers long-term value and enhances platform performance to maintain maximum functionality.
• Make decisions regarding access, permissions, and security controls across systems.
• Establish standards for metadata, data quality, governance, and platform reliability that improve trust, auditability, and enterprise reuse.
• Ensure that governance, compliance, and security are built into the platform architecture and operating model.

Subject Matter Expertise:

• Serve as the SME for general engineering issues and platform strategy.
• Mentor and coach engineers across the team, fostering technical excellence.
• Keep abreast of industry trends and evaluate platform needs for future growth.
• Bring strong ownership, clarity of thought, and architectural judgment to platform design and decision-making.

SUPERVISORY RESPONSIBILITIES:

• No supervisory responsibilities.

Education:

EDUCATION/EXPERIENCE/KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS:

• Master's degree in a relevant field and 9 years of experience; or
• Bachelor’s degree in a relevant field and 11 years of related experience; or
• Equivalent combination of education or years of experience.
• Technical certification may be required.

Experience:

• At least 10 years of experience in cloud infrastructure and/or enterprise da