Enterprise Architect - EA Cloud & Infrastructure

AEP is one of the largest electric energy companies in the U.S., serving over 5 million homes and businesses across 11 states. We are committed to putting the customer first and driving innovation in safe, reliable, and forward-thinking energy solutions.

About the role

The Enterprise Architect – Cloud & Infrastructure is a senior individual contributor responsible for defining, governing, and advancing the enterprise cloud and infrastructure architecture to enable scalable, secure, and cost-effective technology platforms. This role serves as the enterprise authority on cloud and infrastructure architecture, shaping how platforms are designed, governed, and optimized to support long-term business and engineering strategies. Operating at the intersection of enterprise architecture, platform engineering, and DevOps, this position translates business priorities into cloud-enabled architecture, standards, and reference models that drive speed, resilience, and efficiency at scale.

Responsibilities

• Enterprise Cloud & Infrastructure Architecture
  • Define and maintain enterprise cloud and infrastructure reference architecture across multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP).
  • Translate business and engineering requirements into scalable, resilient, and secure infrastructure designs.
  • Ensure alignment between infrastructure platforms, application architectures, and enterprise integration patterns.
• Cloud Platform Strategy & Enablement
  • Design and govern cloud platform strategies for networking, compute, storage, and platform services.
  • Partner with platform engineering and DevOps teams to align CI/CD pipelines, developer tooling, and infrastructure-as-code practices with enterprise architecture direction.
  • Drive adoption of modern infrastructure patterns, including containerization, orchestration (Kubernetes), and service mesh where appropriate.
  • Influence enterprise-wide adoption of standards and platform strategies.
• Governance, FinOps & Cloud Operations
  • Establish and enforce cloud governance standards, including policy-as-code, tagging, cost management, and lifecycle controls.
  • Lead FinOps and cost optimization strategies to ensure efficient use of cloud resources.
  • Define guardrails that balance developer autonomy with security, compliance, and operational reliability.
  • Provide architectural review and guidance for cloud initiatives to mitigate technical risk and ensure long-term sustainability.
• Modernization & Transformation
  • Lead infrastructure modernization initiatives, including cloud migration, legacy platform transformation, and automation strategies.
  • Enable incremental migration approaches that reduce risk and support parallel operation.
  • Evaluate emerging technologies and determine strategic fit within the enterprise architecture.
• Risk, Security & Compliance
  • Define cloud security architecture, including identity, access management, network segmentation, and zero-trust principles.
  • Ensure alignment with enterprise cybersecurity, regulatory, and compliance requirements (e.g., SOC 2, ISO, FedRAMP where applicable).
  • Identify and mitigate enterprise-level infrastructure risks.

Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or a related field.
• 10+ years of experience in cloud architecture, infrastructure engineering, or platform engineering roles.
• Proven ability to influence and drive alignment without direct authority, balancing standards with delivery realities.
• Proven ability to communicate architectural vision and recommendations to senior leadership.
• Vendor technical leadership: review delivered work, spot risks early, and drive quality outcomes.

Preferred Qualifications

• Master’s degree in a technical or analytical discipline.
• Familiarity with regulated or mission-critical environments such as utilities, energy, finance, or infrastructure.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in computer science, engineering, or related technical field is required.
• 8 years of relevant work experience is required. An equivalent combination of education and related experience may be considered.

Pay

Compensation Range: $116,255.00 - $151,132.50

Schedule

The Physical Demand Level for this job is: Sedentary Work. Exerting up to 10 pounds of force occasionally and/or a negligible amount of force frequently to lift, carry, push, pull, or otherwise move objects, including the human body. Sedentary work involves sitting most of the time but may involve walking or standing for brief periods.