Cloud Architect

Responsibilities

• Lead the design and implementation of secure, scalable, resilient, and cost-effective cloud architectures supporting enterprise FDA applications.
• Define target-state cloud architectures, modernization roadmaps, architecture patterns, and technical standards.
• Evaluate existing systems and recommend cloud modernization, migration, re-platforming, refactoring, or cloud-native transformation strategies.
• Design solutions across compute, storage, networking, identity and access management, databases, integration, containers, serverless technologies, and managed cloud services.
• Ensure architecture decisions support high availability, scalability, disaster recovery, performance, security, and operational resilience.
• Develop architecture diagrams, solution designs, technical documentation, standards, and reusable reference architectures.
• AWS & Cloud-Native Engineering
• Architect enterprise solutions using AWS services and cloud-native technologies.
• Design solutions using services such as EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, CloudFront, Route 53, IAM, CloudWatch, and related AWS capabilities.
• Architect containerized and microservices-based platforms using technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes.
• Design secure cloud networking architectures including VPCs, subnets, routing, load balancing, private connectivity, DNS, and security controls.
• Establish patterns for highly available and fault-tolerant cloud applications.
• Support hybrid-cloud and multi-environment architectures across development, testing, staging, and production.
• Application Modernization
• Partner with application teams to modernize legacy and enterprise systems for cloud-native deployment.
• Define architectural patterns for microservices, APIs, event-driven architectures, containerization, and serverless solutions.
• Assess application dependencies, performance requirements, security needs, and technical constraints as part of modernization initiatives.
• Provide guidance on application decomposition, platform selection, and migration strategies.
• Ensure modernization efforts balance technical innovation, operational supportability, security, and cost.
• DevSecOps & Infrastructure Automation
• Establish architecture standards for Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using tools such as Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible, or similar technologies.
• Promote automated provisioning, configuration management, testing, deployment, monitoring, and security controls.
• Develop reusable cloud templates and architecture patterns to improve consistency and delivery speed.
• Incorporate security and compliance requirements into cloud architecture and automation frameworks.
• Support Git-based workflows, automated deployments, and modern DevSecOps engineering practices.
• Cloud Security & Federal Compliance
• Design cloud solutions in alignment with FDA, HHS, Federal, and organizational cybersecurity requirements.
• Apply security-by-design principles across cloud infrastructure, applications, data, identities, APIs, and network architectures.
• Work closely with cybersecurity teams to support compliance with applicable NIST, FISMA, FedRAMP, Zero Trust, and Federal security controls.
• Architect identity and access management, encryption, logging, auditing, network segmentation, and security monitoring capabilities.
• Support security assessments, remediation activities, technical reviews, and authorization processes.
• Ensure cloud architecture supports vulnerability management, patching, configuration management, and continuous monitoring.
• AI & Generative AI Architecture
• Design secure and scalable cloud architectures capable of supporting AI, Generative AI, machine learning, and intelligent automation workloads.
• Evaluate appropriate cloud services and architecture patterns for AI-enabled applications, including services such as Amazon Bedrock, SageMaker, and related AWS AI capabilities, where applicable.
• Define secure integration patterns between enterprise applications, data platforms, APIs, and AI services.
• Ensure AI solutions address security, privacy, data governance, scalability, performance, and Federal compliance requirements.
• Partner with AI, data, and application teams to establish reusable cloud architecture patterns for AI-enabled solutions.
• Evaluate opportunities to leverage AI and AIOps for cloud monitoring, anomaly detection, capacity management, incident analysis, optimization, and operational efficiency.
• Provide architectural guidance for responsible and secure adoption of AI technologies within Federal environments.
• Reliability, Performance & Cost Optimization
• Design cloud environments to support high availability, resiliency, disaster recovery, and business continuity requirements.
• Define monitoring, logging, observability, and performance-management architecture.
• Establish architecture patterns for capacity planning, scaling, and system performance optimization.
• Identify opportunities to optimize cloud consumption and improve cost efficiency through appropriate architecture and service selection.
• Apply FinOps principles and cloud cost-management best practices where applicable.
• Support root-cause analysis and architectural remediation for complex production or performance issues.
• Architecture Governance & Technical Leadership
• Serve as a senior technical advisor and escalation point for cloud architecture and modernization initiatives.
• Lead architecture reviews, design sessions, technical assessments, and proof-of-concept activities.
• Provide architectural guidance to application developers, DevOps engineers, infrastructure engineers, cybersecurity teams, and technical leads.
• Establish and promote cloud architecture principles, standards, reusable patterns, and engineering best practices.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and recommend appropriate adoption strategies.
• Communicate architecture decisions, risks, technical tradeoffs, dependencies, and recommendations to both technical and program leadership.
• Mentor technical team members and promote strong cloud engineering and architecture practices.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in cloud engineering, infrastructure, systems architecture, software architecture, or related technical disciplines.
• Demonstrated experience designing enterprise-scale cloud solutions.
• Strong hands-on experience with Amazon Web Services (AWS).
• Strong understanding of AWS networking, compute, storage, identity, security, monitoring, and managed services.
• Experience designing cloud-native, microservices, containerized, and distributed architectures.
• Experience with Docker, Kubernetes, and preferably Amazon EKS.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code technologies such as Terraform or CloudFormation.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD and DevSecOps practices.
• Experience designing secure cloud networking and IAM architectures.
• Understanding of application modernization, APIs, integration, and enterprise application architecture.
• Experience with cloud monitoring, observability, logging, and performance-management solutions.
• Strong understanding of high availability, disaster recovery, scalability, and resiliency.
• Experience working with enterprise cybersecurity and compliance requirements.
• Strong analytical, architecture, troubleshooting, documentation, communication, and leadership skills.
• Ability to communicate complex technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.