Cloud Solutions Architect

Cloud Solutions Architect

Overview

This role is primarily focused on developing cloud architectures, frameworks, standards, governance, and policies for the organization.

The ideal candidate will be proficient in engaging with business users and other technology teams to understand and assess requirements to subsequently develop multi/hybrid cloud solution architectures that can be implemented by the engineering teams.

The resource will have to augment cloud engineering skills or guide engineers as needed.

This role requires a degree of on-premises infrastructure knowledge because many on-premises systems interact with cloud resources or are being migrated to the cloud.

The organization is also seeking to advance their Infrastructure-as-Code practices in the near future.

Responsibilities

Cloud Architecture & Design

• Design scalable, resilient, cost optimized, and secure cloud solutions that align with business needs and cybersecurity policies.
• Assess applications for cloud suitability and develop migration roadmaps.
• Document architectural designs (Microsoft Visio), cloud governance frameworks, cloud standards, and implementation guides.
• Develop cloud architectures, frameworks, standards, governance, and policies for the organization.
• Engage with business users and other technology teams to understand and assess requirements to subsequently develop multi/hybrid cloud solution architectures that can be implemented by the engineering teams.
• Augment cloud engineering skills or guide engineers as needed.
• Primarily focus on designing architectures, standards, and governance for the AWS platform but also support other Architects on Azure when required.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & Automation

• Hands-on experience with Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure ARM, or Pulumi for infrastructure provisioning.
• Develop CI/CD pipelines for automated deployment using GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, Jenkins, or AWS CodePipeline.
• Automate configuration management using Ansible, Chef, or Puppet.

Security & Compliance

• Implement cloud security best practices (IAM, RBAC, WAF, Security Groups, NACLs, CloudTrail, GuardDuty, Secrets Manager, NSG, ASG, Service Principals, Managed Identities, Azure Advisor, Defender for Cloud, Key Vault, encryption, monitoring).

Performance Optimization & Cost Management

• Optimize cloud environments for cost efficiency using Cost Explorer, Cost & Usage Reports, Savings Plans, Azure Advisor, Cost and Billing Management, Reservations, and general FinOps practices.
• Monitor performance and availability using CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, Azure Resource Health, SolarWinds.
• Implement auto-scaling, caching, and load balancing strategies for cloud workloads.

Networking & Cloud Connectivity

• Configure and optimize CDNs (CloudFront, Global Accelerator, Frontdoor, Cloudflare, Akamai) for low-latency applications.

Troubleshooting & Support

• Debug and troubleshoot cloud infrastructure, networking, and service-related issues.
• Use cloud-native monitoring, logging, and tracing tools (CloudWatch, Network Monitor, VPC Flow Logs, Azure Monitor, Network Watcher) for root cause analysis.

Collaboration & Stakeholder Engagement

• Work closely with cross-functional teams (Network, Server, DevOps, Cybersecurity, Finance, and Procurement).
• Translate complex technical concepts into business-friendly language.
• Participate in technical discussions, cloud strategy planning, and decision-making processes.

Qualifications

Certifications

• Current AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional certification is strongly preferred.
• Current Azure certification is nice to have.
• Please submit candidate certification credentials when applicable.

Experience
Skill Experience AWS 6-10 Years Azure 2-4 Years Hybrid On-Prem/Knowledge 4-6 Years Cloud Networking 4-6 Years Cloud DevOps 4-6 Years Cloud Security 2-3 Years Cloud FinOps 1-2 Years Microsoft Visio 2-3 Years Amazon Web Services Experience Required 6-10 Years OCI & GCP Nice to have
Required Knowledge & Technical Skills

Cloud Platforms

• Proficiency with AWS and Azure Cloud Platforms is a must.
• Deep Understanding of Cloud Platforms, Services, Frameworks, Governance.
• Expertise in efficiently managing multi-account AWS Organization and multi-subscription Azure Tenant.
• AWS CloudShell / Azure Cloud Shell - PowerShell or CLI.
• Resource may augment existing teams' skillsets for other cloud platforms as needed.
• Experience with hybrid and multi-cloud interoperability and on-prem to cloud integrations.
• This role requires a degree of on-premises infrastructure knowledge because many on-premises systems interact with cloud resources or are being migrated to the cloud.

AWS Technologies

• AWS Compute (EC2, Instance Auto Scaling, Batch)
• AWS Storage (S3, EBS, Batch Operations, Tiers, Intelligent Tiering, Lifecycle Policies)
• AWS data analytics platforms (Glue, Lake Formation, RedShift, Athena, etc.)
• AWS database services (RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, etc.)
• Serverless services (Fargate, Lambda)

Azure Technologies

• Azure compute services (VMs, Scale-Sets, Batch)
• Azure storage (storage accounts, blobs, files, tables, queues, data lake)
• Azure data analytics platforms (Fabric, Data Factory, Synapse, Databricks, Event Hubs etc.)
• Azure database services (Azure SQL DB, Managed Instance, Hyperscale, Cosmos DB etc.)
• Serverless services (Azure Functions, Web App, App Services, ASE, Logic Apps, etc.)

Containers

• Containerization (ECS, ECR, EKS, Batch, Kubernetes, Docker, AKS, OpenShift, etc.)

Disaster Recovery

• Implementing disaster recovery (DR) and backup strategies aligned with regulatory compliance (RTO/RPO)

Security

• Knowledge of zero-trust architectures and cloud security frameworks (CIS, NIST, ISO 27001).
• Experience with SIEM tools (Splunk, Chronicle Security) for security monitoring.

Networking

• Strong understanding of:
  • VPC design
  • vNet design
  • Hub & Spoke
  • Transit Gateway
  • Peering
  • Application Load Balancers
  • Application Gateway
  • Network Load Balancers
  • Traffic Manager
  • VPNs
  • Direct Connect
  • ExpressRoute
  • Hybrid networking

Other Information

• The organization is seeking to advance their Infrastructure-as-Code practices in the near future.