Cloud Architect

About the Role

You will lead the target-state AWS architecture and technical direction for the migration, and act as the senior technical authority from mobilization through cutover. You will shape how workloads land on AWS, set the design standards the delivery team follows, and guide the client toward modern, AI-native architectures that go beyond lift-and-shift.

Key Responsibilities

• Target architecture:

  Define the target AWS architecture, landing zone and migration patterns (rehost, replatform, refactor, retire, retain), with clear rationale for each.

• Discovery and assessment:

  Lead application and infrastructure discovery and workload assessment. Agree the wave plan, sequencing and dependencies with the client.

• Design standards and guardrails:

  Set design standards and security, resilience and cost guardrails, including account structure, networking, IAM, tagging and governance.

• Review and approval:

  Review and approve designs and build outputs, and make sure they meet architectural, security and operational standards.

• AI-native architecture:

  Design solutions that embed AI capabilities from the start, including LLM and agent-based components, retrieval-augmented patterns and managed AI services such as Amazon Bedrock, with attention to data, security and cost.

• Modernization:

  Guide the modernization of Java monolithic applications towards microservices, containers and serverless, where the business case supports it.

• Technical escalation:

  Act as the escalation point for technical issues, risks and trade-off decisions across workstreams.

• Cutover and hypercare:

  Support cutover planning, rehearsals, go-live and hypercare, and confirm operational readiness.

• Stakeholder management:

  Communicate architecture decisions clearly to client executives, application owners and engineering teams, and manage expectations throughout.

• Leadership:

  Mentor architects and engineers, and promote reusable patterns and accelerators across waves.

Required Skills and Experience

• Deep AWS architecture experience; AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional or equivalent.
• Proven track record leading large-scale cloud migrations, from assessment through cutover.
• Strong Java and microservices design experience (Spring Boot, event-driven and API-led patterns).
• Strong knowledge of networking (VPC, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect/VPN, DNS), security (IAM, KMS, network and data protection, compliance), resilience (multi-AZ/multi-region, DR, backup) and cost optimization (FinOps).
• Experience designing landing zones (AWS Control Tower, Organizations, SCPs) and Infrastructure-as-Code approaches (Terraform or CloudFormation).
• Familiarity with containers and orchestration (ECS, EKS, Kubernetes) and CI/CD and observability practices.
• Hands-on understanding of AI/GenAI architecture patterns and how to apply them in enterprise systems.
• Excellent client-facing communication and stakeholder management skills.

Preferred Qualifications

• Additional AWS certifications (DevOps Engineer Professional, Security Specialty, Machine Learning Specialty).
• Experience with AWS migration tooling (Migration Hub, Application Discovery Service, MGN, DMS) and the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• Experience in regulated industries and compliance frameworks.
• Experience with TOGAF or similar architecture frameworks.
• Prior consulting or pre-sales/solutioning experience.

Key Competencies

Architectural judgment, technical leadership, client focus, structured decision-making, risk and cost awareness, and clear communication at both executive and engineering level.