ABOUT THE POSITION As a Principal DevOps Developer on our Developer Experience Team, you will serve as a technical authority and thought leader for our DevOps, CI/CD, and cloud platform capabilities. You will define and drive the evolution of our infrastructure-as-code (IaC), deployment frameworks, observability platforms, and DevOps best practices across the organization. You’ll work closely with senior engineers, security, and business stakeholders to design scalable, secure, and cost‑efficient cloud solutions. This role focuses on technical strategy, complex problem solving, and organizational enablement, while mentoring engineers and influencing engineering standards across teams. HOW YOU’LL MAKE A DIFFERENCE Excellent communication skills, the ability to converse with key stakeholders, understand their needs and describe those needs as work items. Lead the architecture, design, and evolution of CI/CD pipelines and deployment platforms for cloud-native services and microservices. Define and own infrastructure-as-code standards, patterns, and reusable modules using tools such as Terraform, ARM/Bicep, CloudFormation, and cloud SDKs. Drive DevOps and platform engineering best practices across development teams (build, test, deploy, release, rollback). Serve as a technical consultant to development, infrastructure, and security teams on cloud architecture, reliability, performance, and scalability. Establish and evolve observability standards (metrics, logs, tracing) to improve system reliability, performance, and diagnostics. Champion DevSecOps practices, ensuring security-by-design, policy-as-code, and compliance across pipelines and infrastructure. Identify systemic issues, lead root-cause analysis of complex production incidents, and define long-term corrective actions. Evaluate new tools, technologies, and cloud services; make recommendations aligned to business and engineering goals. Mentor senior and junior engineers; raise the overall DevOps and cloud maturity of the organization. Actively contribute to Agile-DevOps practices, including story refinement, technical design discussions, and cross-team collaboration. YOU ARE 10+ years of experience in software engineering, cloud, or platform engineering roles. Certifications such as Azure DevOps Engineer Expert, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, or equivalent. Experience designing or operating shared developer platforms or internal tooling. Strong background in observability platforms (e.g., Grafana, Application Insights, Log Analytics). Experience with cost optimization, capacity planning, and performance tuning in large-scale cloud environments. Exposure to multi-cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP) or hybrid cloud architectures. Experience with containerization and orchestration. Certifications such as Azure Fundamentals or Azure Developer Associate. YOU HAVE Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical discipline (or equivalent experience). 8+ years of experience in DevOps, cloud infrastructure, or software engineering roles, with demonstrated technical leadership. Deep, hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure (e.g., App Services, Logic Apps, Service Bus, Kubernetes/AKS, Azure SQL, Synapse). Expert-level experience designing and operating CI/CD platforms and release automation (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, Jenkins). Strong proficiency in Infrastructure as Code, including designing scalable, reusable IaC frameworks (Terraform, ARM/Bicep, or similar). Advanced scripting or programming skills (e.g., C#, Python, Bash, PowerShell). Deep understanding of microservices architecture, distributed systems, RESTful APIs, and cloud-native design patterns. Proven ability to influence technical direction and collaborate across teams and geographies. Excellent communication skills, with the ability to translate complex technical topics to both technical and non-technical stakeholders. #LI-SA1 #Hybrid This job description is not meant to be an all-inclusive list of duties and responsibilities, but constitutes a general definition of the position's scope and function in the company. Columbia is different. As a global apparel and footwear company with over 80 years of being ourselves and not apologizing for it, we’ve seen a lot and done a lot. But our motto remains: “It’s perfect. now make it better.” Learn more about how you can help us shape the next 80 years here.