Principal Cloud Engineers serve as thought leaders, partnering with Engineering, Architecture, Security, and Operations teams to establish best practices, promote platform reusability, and guide major technical decisions. They serve as accelerators by enabling teams through tooling, automation, mentorship, and strategic technical direction.
Essential Duties and Responsibilities
Develop and enforce cloud governance models that align with security, compliance, and operational standards.
Partner with business stakeholders and product teams to align cloud solutions with long-term organizational goals and ensure platform decisions support the company's mission.
Mentor senior engineers and promote architectural thinking, helping teams balance speed of delivery with long-term scalability and sustainability.
Participate in enterprise architecture reviews to ensure consistency, quality, security, and alignment across solutions.
Lead the architecture and design of enterprise-scale infrastructure solutions across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, including Azure, AWS, GCP, and on-premises environments.
Define reusable platform patterns and reference architectures that enable self-service capabilities, scalability, and secure-by-default designs.
Drive the adoption of cloud-native technologies, including container orchestration, serverless computing, service meshes, and event-driven infrastructure.
Lead complex migrations and transformation initiatives, including data center exits, cloud modernization efforts, and cross-cloud initiatives.
Guide investments in tools, technologies, and platforms, including Infrastructure as Code (IaC) pipelines, observability stacks, and platform engineering practices.
Operate and support cloud platforms by performing OS-level patching, enforcing security policies, and maintaining high availability through proactive monitoring and alerting.
Troubleshoot complex issues involving infrastructure, networking, and application layers across multiple cloud platforms.
Perform other duties as assigned.
Knowledge/Skills/Abilities
Security & Governance: Strong knowledge of cloud security controls, compliance frameworks, including SOC 2, HIPAA, and ISO 27001, and audit-readiness requirements.
Cloud-Native Technologies: Advanced experience with Kubernetes, service meshes, GitOps, and scalable CI/CD platforms.
Cross-Functional Influence: Demonstrated ability to drive decisions at the intersection of business, security, operations, and software engineering.
Architecture & Design: Proven expertise in designing large-scale, resilient infrastructure across multi-cloud and hybrid environments.
Platform Engineering: Deep understanding of reusable infrastructure platforms, developer enablement tools, and service catalogs.
Innovation & Leadership: Ability to identify emerging technologies, assess their business and technical value, and strategically integrate them into enterprise environments.
Cloud & Infrastructure: Broad knowledge of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS offerings, with an emphasis on Azure. Experience with AWS and GCP is preferred. Strong knowledge of Linux and Windows operating systems.
Automation & DevOps: Hands-on experience with Terraform, Bicep, Azure DevOps, scripting languages such as PowerShell, Python, and Bash, configuration management tools such as Puppet, and backup and disaster recovery technologies such as Commvault and Zerto.
Education/Experience
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field and seven (7+) years of experience in cloud architecture, DevOps, infrastructure automation, or platform engineering
[OR] Associate’s degree and nine (9+) years of experience in cloud architecture, DevOps, infrastructure automation, or platform engineering
[OR] High School Diploma/GED and eleven (11+) years of experience in cloud architecture, DevOps, infrastructure automation, or platform engineering
Why should you join our team?
At Consumers Energy, we offer more than just a place to work. We foster a culture that supports career development, growth, and stability, and we take pride in offering our co-workers excellent benefits and compensation packages. We are deliberately creating an inclusive culture that makes our diverse team of co-workers feel valued, supported, and empowered every day. We're a company made up of thousands of people, all with different stories to share and work to do, but we stand united in our company purpose: world class performance delivering hometown service.
What we offer
Competitive compensation packages
Medical, Dental and Vision
401k with company match
Paid parental leave
Up to 13 paid Holidays
Paid time off
Educational Assistance Program
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
We, at CMS Energy, value Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion. It is part of our DNA. We treat our employees with respect, we treat each other fairly and we value the opinions of others. We are passionate about building and nurturing an environment where everyone feels included. We don’t discriminate. We seek to learn about each other and better understand our unique differences. Our uniqueness makes us authentic. We create safe spaces where everyone can be who they truly are. We invite difficult conversations and uncomfortable topics. We value diverse perspectives; this is what makes us great together. We harbor an inclusive environment where employees feel empowered to share their backgrounds, experiences, and ideas. Our Employee Resource Groups, Women in Energy (WE), Minority Advisory Panel (MAP), Pride Alliance of Consumers Energy (PACE), GENERGY (Different Generations), capable (Different Abilities), Interfaith, People Planet Partners, and Veterans Advisory Panel (VAP) are key enablers to living the values of our company culture: Caring, Empowered, Deliberate, Agility, and Ownership.
All qualified applicants will not be discriminated against and will receive consideration for employment without regard to protected veteran status, disability, race, color, religion, sex, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or national origin.
