System Architect – Platform Engineering & Cloud

Career Area:

Job Description:

Your Work Shapes the World at Caterpillar Inc.

When you join Caterpillar, you're joining a global team who cares not just about the work we do - but also about each other. We are the makers, problem solvers, and future world builders who are creating stronger, more sustainable communities. We don't just talk about progress and innovation here - we make it happen, with our customers, where we work and live. Together, we are building a better world, so we can all enjoy living in it.

Role Definition

Own and evolve the end-to-end technical architecture for the platform ecosystem, ensuring solutions are secure, scalable, integrated, resilient, cost-effective, and operationally reliable.

Define architecture across applications, cloud platforms, data, APIs, integrations, and shared platform capabilities, translating business and product needs into implementable designs and engineering standards. Create HLDs and architecture patterns, guide LLDs, and ensure architectural decisions are successfully translated into working solutions.

This is a hands-on architecture and engineering role. The System Architect will actively contribute to software development, including production code, reference implementations, technical prototypes, code reviews, and complex feature delivery.

The role remains technically accountable through production, leading diagnosis of complex cross-system issues and driving architectural and engineering improvements through resolution and stabilisation.

Responsibilities

Architecture & Technical Design

• Own end-to-end architecture across application, platform, data, and integration layers
• Create HLDs, reference architectures, reusable patterns, and key technical designs
• Guide LLDs and ensure implementations remain aligned with architectural intent
• Define standards for APIs, microservices, data flows, identity, integration, and cloud-native solutions
• Make technical trade-offs across scalability, reliability, security, performance, maintainability, and cloud cost

Hands-On Engineering & Development

• Actively participate in software development and complex feature implementation
• Write, debug, test, and review production-quality code
• Build prototypes, reference implementations, reusable components, and technical accelerators
• Participate in code and design reviews and improve engineering quality and maintainability
• Validate architectural decisions through working software, testing, and production evidence

Platform & Cloud Engineering

• Design distributed and cloud-native solutions across AWS and Azure
• Establish reusable capabilities for identity, integration, environments, containerisation, CI/CD, and microservices
• Guide application modernisation and cloud adoption
• Design for high availability, resilience, scalability, security, and cost efficiency
• Reduce project-specific solutions through reusable platform services and engineering patterns

Production Reliability & Technical Problem Solving

• Define observability across logging, metrics, tracing, health checks, dashboards, and alerting
• Lead diagnosis of complex cross-system production issues, working directly with code, telemetry, configuration, integrations, and infrastructure to identify root cause
• Drive technical resolution through implementation and stabilisation
• Address recurring issues through architectural and engineering improvements
• Ensure systems are secure, observable, supportable, and production-ready

Technical Leadership & Governance

• Establish architecture and engineering standards across teams
• Mentor engineers through architecture reviews, design reviews, code reviews, and hands-on technical guidance
• Evaluate technologies and frameworks based on engineering value, risk, cost, and long-term sustainability
• Partner with Product, Security, Data, DevOps, Product Support, and Engineering teams while retaining architectural accountability

Skill Descriptors

System & Cloud Architecture (Extensive Experience)

• Designs complex distributed and cloud-native systems across AWS and Azure
• Defines application, data and database architecture, including data flows, storage patterns, schemas, performance, and scalability
• Applies security-by-design, including identity, access, service security, certificates, and secure architecture patterns
• Makes effective trade-offs across scalability, security, reliability, performance, maintainability, and cost

Hands-On Software Engineering (Extensive Experience)

• Strong hands-on software development capability, preferably Java
• Writes, tests, debugs, reviews, maintains, and troubleshoots production software
• Builds APIs, services, prototypes, reference implementations, and reusable components
• Translates architectural decisions into working production implementations
• Diagnoses difficult problems spanning application and platform boundaries

Platform, Integration & DevOps (Extensive Experience)

• Designs APIs, microservices, event-driven integrations, and reusable platform capabilities
• Strong understanding of Docker, Kubernetes, CI/CD, environment management, and modern DevOps practices
• Designs resilient integrations with clear service contracts, dependencies, and failure handling
• Applies platform engineering principles to reduce duplication and accelerate product delivery
• Understands database, real-time data processing, messaging, and distributed-system patterns

Production Engineering & Technical Leadership (Extensive Experience)

• Designs for observability, high availability, resilience, recovery, and operational support
• Leads root-cause diagnosis of complex production and performance issues
• Uses logs, metrics, traces, application behaviour, code, and infrastructure evidence to drive technical decisions
• Leads through technical depth, working implementations, engineering standards, and mentoring
• Drives systemic improvements following production failures rather than treating incidents as isolated events

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field
• 10+ years of software engineering, architecture, or distributed-systems experience
• Strong hands-on Java development experience
• Production experience designing/ implementing cloud-native systems on AWS/ Azure
• Strong experience with distributed systems, APIs, microservices, data/integration patterns, and production troubleshooting
• Experience with containers, Kubernetes, CI/CD, relational databases, and modern software engineering practices
• AWS and/or Azure Solution Architect certification preferred

Success Metrics

• Improved platform reliability, scalability, performance, and security
• Reduction in architecture and integration-related production issues
• Faster diagnosis and recovery of complex system failures
• Adoption and reuse of common architecture and platform patterns
• Increased compliance with observability and production-readiness standards
• Improved cloud cost efficiency
• Successful translation of architecture into high-quality production implementations

Posting Dates:

Caterpillar is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Qualified applicants of any age are encouraged to apply

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