Principal Compute Engineer (Team Lead)
Job Family: Infrastructure & Cloud Engineering
Job Profile:
Level: P4
OUTGROWN YOUR OWN BACKYARD COME PLAY IN OURS.
At Columbia, we're as passionate about the outdoors as you are. And while our gear is available worldwide, we're proud to be based in the Pacific Northwest, where natural wonders are our playground.
Every product we make and every task we undertake is inspired by the famous words of our founder, Gert Boyle: It's perfect. Now make it better. As pioneers of relentless improvement, we are constantly evolving.
We believe the outdoors is ours to protect and strive to keep our planet healthy. We believe in empowering people to experience the outdoors to the fullest.
And we believe in you.
About The Position
Columbia Sportswear is powered by technology that connects four global brands, a worldwide supply chain, and 500+ retail stores. Our Columbia Digital Technology (CDT) organization is expanding its Global Capability Center (GCC) in India to help drive our next phase of cloud transformation.
We are seeking a Principal Cloud Engineer (P4) to serve as a hands-on technical leader and team leader within our global Infrastructure Engineering organization. This role will lead design and delivery of cloud infrastructure capabilities in our Azure-first environment, while partnering closely with our US-based Cloud Infrastructure team to align on architecture, standards, and shared roadmaps.
You bring deep Azure expertise; familiarity with AWS is a plus but not required, and experience with AliCloud remains an added advantage. Because this role partners with global teams across North America, Europe, and Asia, especially the US-based Cloud Infrastructure team. Excellent English communication and a proven ability to collaborate across time zones and organizational boundaries are essential.
How You'll Make a Difference
In this role, you'll lead and contribute hands-on as part of Columbia's global Infrastructure Engineering team to design, build, secure, and operate enterprise cloud platforms and services at scale.
You will:
- Lead technical design for cloud infrastructure solutions (networking, identity, security, governance, and platform services), producing clear architecture diagrams and decision records
- Serve as team lead for a small squad of cloud engineers: set priorities, delegate work, remove blockers, coach/mentor engineers, and drive consistent engineering practices
- Partner closely with the US-based Cloud Infrastructure team to align standards, reference architectures, and shared roadmaps; collaborate effectively across time zones
- Own infrastructure-as-code patterns (Terraform) and CI/CD automation, improving reusability, security, and deployment safety
- Drive reliability and operations maturity: incident response leadership, post-incident learning, runbooks, observability, and continuous improvement
- Conduct technical reviews, audits, and assessments; ensure documentation is accurate, actionable, and kept current
This position plays a key role in shaping Columbia's cloud platform strategy and execution—building a stable, scalable, and secure foundation while enabling delivery teams worldwide.
YOU ARE
- A principal-level cloud engineer who combines strong hands-on delivery with architecture and design leadership
- A team lead who coaches others, drives accountability, and raises the quality bar through standards and reviews
- A collaborative partner who builds trusted relationships and works effectively with US-based Cloud Infrastructure teammates, product teams, and stakeholders across regions
- A clear and confident communicator—in both spoken and written English—able to translate complex technical concepts for technical and non-technical audiences
- Someone who values documentation, repeatable automation, and process-driven engineering
- An analytical thinker who emphasizes structure, security, reliability, and cost awareness
- A proactive, self-directed engineer who thrives in a dynamic, global environment
YOU HAVE
- 8+ years of hands-on experience in cloud infrastructure / platform engineering, including ownership of production environments
- Bachelor's degree in computer science, Engineering, or related STEM field—or equivalent experience
- Significant hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure (primary requirement)
- Proven ability to lead technical design (architecture, trade-offs, documentation) and drive alignment across teams
- Experience acting as a technical lead or team lead, including mentoring, code/IaC reviews, and delivery planning
- Strong Terraform experience, particularly for IaC, reusable modules, and deployment pipelines
- Familiarity with GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps, CI/CD, and automation tools such as Ansible and PowerShell
- Experience with cloud security and governance controls (e.g., identity, network segmentation, policy-as-code, logging/monitoring)
- Experience with ITSM/ITIL and operational excellence practices; exposure to Jira Service Manager is a plus
- General knowledge of AWS (nice to have, not required); AliCloud experience is an added advantage
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. 
