Cloud Solutions Architect / Senior Cloud Solutions Architect

About the Role

At PGE, our work is foundational to how Oregon is powered today and into the future. We plan for, build, and operate the technology that enables a smarter, cleaner, and more resilient energy system, delivering safe, reliable, and affordable power to more than two million customers across the state. The Cloud Solutions Architect plays a mission‑critical role in this effort, providing architectural leadership for the cloud platforms that underpin PGE’s utility operations. This role is responsible for designing, governing, and guiding secure, resilient, and cost-effective cloud architectures, with a primary focus on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and support for Microsoft Azure, ensuring these platforms can reliably support always‑on, customer‑ and field‑facing systems.

Operating at the intersection of architecture, delivery, operations, and governance, this position holds decision authority for cloud design choices that directly influence system reliability, operational resilience, cybersecurity posture, capital protection, and regulatory compliance. The decisions made in this role have tangible, real-world impact affecting outage response, field execution, safety, and the continuity of essential utility services. As a trusted architectural leader, this position enables teams to move quickly while ensuring solutions remain secure by design, resilient by default, and operationally sound. This role strengthens the digital backbone of utility operations technology, connecting field crews, engineers, planners, and operators through mission‑critical systems that support power generation, asset and work management, grid operations, and customer outcomes where failure is not an option.

We're hiring for a position open to both Mid-Career and Senior level candidates. The level will be determined based on the successful applicant's qualifications, experience, and skills demonstrated during the interview process.

Key Responsibilities – Mid-Career Level

Solution Architecture & Design

• Develop solution architectures supporting business initiatives and operational objectives.
• Translate business, technical, security, and operational requirements into detailed solution designs.
• Produce architecture diagrams, design documentation, technical specifications, and implementation guidance.
• Ensure solutions align with enterprise standards, patterns, and reference architectures.
• Participate in architecture reviews and technology evaluations.

Cloud & Platform Architecture

• Design secure and scalable cloud-based solutions leveraging AWS and Azure services.
• Support cloud migration and modernization efforts through architecture guidance and design reviews.
• Apply approved cloud design patterns for networking, identity, compute, storage, monitoring, and resiliency.
• Partner with engineering teams to implement cloud solutions that meet performance, security, and operational requirements.

Security & Compliance

• Incorporate security-by-design principles into solution architectures.
• Ensure compliance with enterprise security standards, regulatory requirements, and control objectives.
• Collaborate with cybersecurity teams to address risks, vulnerabilities, and remediation strategies.

Technology Evaluation & Consulting

• Research emerging technologies and evaluate applicability to business needs.
• Provide technical consultation and recommendations to project teams and business stakeholders.
• Contribute to proof-of-concept activities and technology assessments.
• Support vendor evaluations and product selection decisions.

Collaboration & Delivery Support

• Partner with project managers, engineers, business analysts, and operational teams throughout project lifecycles.
• Support implementation teams by resolving design questions and architectural issues.
• Act as a technical resource and mentor for less experienced team members.

Key Responsibilities – Senior Level

Enterprise Solution Architecture Leadership

• Lead architecture efforts for complex technology initiatives, capital programs, and enterprise transformation efforts.
• Develop target-state architectures, solution roadmaps, and strategic technology recommendations.
• Govern architecture decisions and ensure alignment with enterprise architecture principles and standards.
• Provide authoritative guidance on architecture tradeoffs involving cost, risk, performance, resiliency, and maintainability.

Cloud Architecture & Modernization

• Design and govern enterprise-grade AWS architectures supporting production and regulated workloads.
• Define cloud reference architectures, landing zones, security patterns, and operational standards.
• Lead cloud migration and modernization initiatives while reducing technical debt and long-term operating costs.
• Establish architecture guardrails that support standardized and reusable cloud services across the enterprise.

Reliability, Risk & Operational Resilience

• Own architectural decisions affecting reliability, availability, recoverability, and operational risk.
• Act as an architectural authority during major incidents and problem-management activities.
• Ensure disaster recovery and business continuity requirements are reflected in solution architectures.
• Design systems that enhance observability, fault isolation, resiliency, and operational supportability.

Security, Compliance & Governance

• Embed security-by-design principles across solution architectures.
• Partner with Cyber Security, Risk, Compliance, and Audit organizations to ensure architectures satisfy regulatory and control requirements.
• Interpret governance objectives and balance business agility with risk management.
• Serve as a technical advisor during audits, architecture reviews, and executive escalations.

Strategic Consulting & Innovation

• Consult with senior leaders to align technology decisions with business strategy.
• Evaluate emerging technologies and provide recommendations regarding enterprise adoption.
• Lead architectural assessments, business case development, and technology evaluations.
• Identify opportunities for simplification, standardization, modernization, and cost optimization.

Cost Awareness & Platform Sustainability

• Influence architectural decisions that drive long-term total cost of ownership (TCO).
• Partner with business teams to optimize spend through rightsizing, service selection, and architectural guardrails.
• Prevent redundant or overlapping cloud capabilities by reinforcing platform reuse and enterprise standards.

Technical Leadership & Mentoring

• Serve as a senior technical leader and mentor across architecture, engineering, and delivery teams.
• Lead architecture review boards, design reviews, and complex cross-functional initiatives.
• Influence technology decisions without direct authority.
• Build architectural capability across the organization through coaching, standards development, and knowledge sharing.

Qualifications

Education

Requires a bachelor's degree in business, computer science, engineering management or equivalent work experience in related discipline.

Experience – Mid-Career Level

Typically, five or more years in solution architecture, systems engineering, infrastructure, software engineering, or related disciplines.

Experience – Senior Level

Typically, eight or more years in related field.

Required Qualifications – Senior Level

• 8+ years of experience in cloud architecture, infrastructure, or platform engineering, with deep AWS expertise.
• Proven experience designing and operating production AWS environments (VPC, IAM, EC2, S3, RDS, Lambda, ECS/EKS).
• Working knowledge of Microsoft Azure (Azure AD, networking, compute, storage) sufficient to support hybrid or secondary workloads.
• Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation).
• Experience supporting regulated or high reliability environments.
• Demonstrated experience designing enterprise-scale solutions across cloud, applications, infrastructure, integration, and security domains.

Skills & Competencies

Mid-Career Level

Functional Competencies:

• Intermediate knowledge of quality and conformance frameworks.
• Intermediate knowledge of specification and design of information systems.
• Basic knowledge of emerging technologies.
• Working knowledge of the business areas and functions.
• Intermediate knowledge of IT/business strategies.

General Competencies:

• Intermediate customer focus skills.
• Intermediate accuracy skills.
• Intermediate risk management skills.
• Intermediate oral and written communication skills.
• Intermediate interpersonal skills.
• Intermediate decision-making skills.
• Intermediate organization and prioritization skills.

Senior Level

Functional Competencies:

• Advanced knowledge of quality and conformance frameworks.
• Advanced knowledge of specification and design of information systems.
• Advanced knowledge of emerging technologies.
• Intermediate knowledge of the business areas and functions.
• Intermediate knowledge of IT/business strategies.

General Competencies:

• Advanced customer focus skills.
• Advanced accuracy skills.
• Advanced risk management skills.
• Advanced oral and written communication skills.
• Advanced interpersonal skills.
• Advanced decision-making skills.
• Advanced organization and prioritization skills.
• Advanced meeting facilitation skills.
• Advanced team-building skills.

Certifications

AWS Solution Architect, TOGAF, ITIL, ARCHIMATE certification preferred.

AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Professional or Associate) and Azure Solutions Architect certification (or equivalent experience) preferred for Senior level.

Physical and Cognitive Demands

Cognitive Level: Substantial: Consistent use of logic or scientific thinking to define problems, collect information, establish facts and draw valid conclusions (for example, engineer, HR director, plant manager, etc.). Ability to adhere to set response times, deadlines.