Principal IS Unix Architect

About the role

Amgen is looking for a Principal IS Unix Architect to act as a principal technical leader for its enterprise Unix and Linux platforms. The role covers architecture, automation, reliability, security, performance and lifecycle management, delivering resilient infrastructure for business-critical applications across on-premises and cloud environments.

Key responsibilities

• Lead end-to-end architecture, engineering and lifecycle management of Unix and Linux platforms, from strategy and standards through deployment, operations, modernization and retirement.
• Act as technical owner of large-scale Unix and Linux initiatives, driving architecture decisions, standardization, scalability, availability and maintainability.
• Architect scalable Unix platforms across data centers, AWS, Azure or GCP, integrating virtualization, container orchestration, storage, networking and management tooling.
• Define architectural standards, validation controls and governance for OS builds, configuration baselines, patching, vulnerability remediation, privileged access, audit readiness and regulatory compliance.
• Advise senior leadership, security teams and other architects on architectural options and trade-offs, and help the Unix service owner improve reliability, performance, observability and efficiency.
• Establish best practices in platform engineering, infrastructure as code, configuration management and DevSecOps, and drive the platform roadmap toward automated provisioning, CI/CD, backup and recovery, drift control, Agentic AI and cost optimization.
• Drive capacity planning, performance engineering and modernization, and mentor L4 and L5 engineers through architecture reviews, automation reviews and troubleshooting.
• Lead cross-functional collaboration and major incident escalation, coordinating teams to restore service and prevent recurrence.

Required profile

• Basic qualification: doctorate with 2 years, master's with 4 years, bachelor's with 6 years, associate's with 10 years, or high school diploma with 12 years of relevant experience.
• Preferred: proven track record of large-scale, highly available Unix and Linux platforms across physical, virtualized and cloud environments, with clustering, disaster recovery, storage, networking and service continuity.
• Preferred: demonstrated principal-level leadership, mentoring and stakeholder communication, and ability to lead major technical initiatives.

Required skills

• Deep Linux expertise (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, Amazon Linux), system hardening, patching, upgrades, performance tuning and capacity management.
• Automation and scripting with Ansible, Python, Shell/Bash, infrastructure as code, source control and CI/CD.
• AWS, Azure or GCP infrastructure, virtualization, container platforms, monitoring and security controls.
• Good to have: RHCE, AWS, Azure or GCP certifications; Terraform, Puppet; IAM, LDAP, Active Directory, Kerberos, CIS benchmarks.