Principal Engineer Cloud Economics & Optimization

About

Syneos Health® is a leading fully‑integrated life sciences services organization that partners with innovators across the drug development and commercialization continuum. The company emphasizes career development, an inclusive culture, and a purpose‑driven environment focused on delivering impact for customers and patients.

Job Summary

The Principal Engineer provides technical leadership for delivering standardized, compliant, and scalable infrastructure foundations (IaaS) through automation, operating as a predictable internal service provider. This role owns infrastructure standards and configurations, base images, capacity and quota management, lifecycle and patching execution, and integration with foundational services such as network, DNS/Infoblox, storage (NetApp), and identity. The Principal Engineer establishes and enforces infrastructure‑as‑code standards, image‑factory and lifecycle automation, and cloud‑native quota/capacity modeling to ensure repeatable provisioning and operational rigor. Operating within guardrails that prohibit bespoke builds, the role drives an automation‑first mindset and implements controls that prevent manual variance so all consumption flows through approved patterns defined by Architecture and Engineering.

Core Responsibilities

• Own and evolve standardized infrastructure foundation patterns, configurations, and base images for Windows and Linux platforms.
• Build and operate an automation‑first provisioning model, ensuring all consumption flows through approved patterns and engineering‑defined pipelines (no bespoke/manual builds).
• Define and enforce infrastructure‑as‑code standards, modules, and guardrails to enable repeatable, compliant deployments at scale.
• Design and run an “image factory” capability, including automated build, validation, hardening, versioning, and publishing of golden images.
• Lead patching, lifecycle, and baseline compliance for foundational infrastructure services, with measurable SLAs/SLOs and audit‑ready evidence.
• Own capacity management and cloud‑native quota modeling (forecasting, trend analysis, thresholds, and lifecycle plans) to ensure predictable supply.
• Engineer and maintain network and name services integration, including DNS and Infoblox, ensuring secure and resilient connectivity patterns.
• Integrate and operate storage foundations (e.g., NetApp), including standard configurations, access patterns, and lifecycle controls.
• Implement identity integration and access patterns that align with enterprise security requirements and platform standards.
• Establish controls to eliminate manual variance (policy/validation checks, automated drift detection, and remediation workflows).
• Troubleshoot complex infrastructure issues across compute, network, storage, and identity; drive root‑cause analysis and continuous improvement through operational rigor.
• Apply standards across Azure, GCP, AWS, and OCI.

Additional Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience); advanced degree preferred.
• Senior‑level experience in infrastructure engineering or solution architecture, with strong emphasis on standardized IaaS foundations and automation in Azure, GCP, AWS, and OCI (or comparable cloud environments).
• Strong Windows and Linux administration skills, including patching, baseline hardening, and lifecycle management.
• Demonstrated expertise with core infrastructure services: networking, SSL, DNS, and Infoblox (or equivalent IPAM/DNS tooling).
• Experience with enterprise storage platforms (e.g., NetApp) and standardized storage/access patterns.
• Proven ability to integrate identity and access patterns with enterprise directory and security standards.
• Hands‑on experience building automation and IaC standards (e.g., Terraform, Bicep, ARM), including reusable modules, guardrails, and policy‑based controls.
• Experience implementing image‑factory pipelines (build, validation, publishing) and controls that prevent manual variance/drift in builds.
• Strong operational rigor: incident/problem management, root‑cause analysis, documentation, and measurable service outcomes (SLA/SLO).
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence stakeholders and align engineering teams to approved patterns and guardrails.

Experience Required

• Minimum of 8 years of Cloud Engineering experience.