Cloud Architect
Role Summary
The senior architectural authority on cloud platform engagements. Operates across AWS, Azure, and GCP, selecting the right cloud per workload rather than defaulting to a preferred vendor. Translates business requirements for resilience, compliance, and cost into concrete reference architectures, landing-zone designs, and decision records that downstream engineering teams can build against without ambiguity.
Embeds with client architecture review boards as the technical authority of record. Drives decisions through written architecture decision records, not whiteboard sessions that leave no trace. Pushes back on hyperscaler-driven complexity when a simpler service satisfies the actual requirement. Treats every architecture as a document the next architect will inherit, and writes it accordingly.
Skills
- AWS, Azure, and GCP at the architect level
- Multi-cloud workload placement and portability analysis
- Landing-zone and organizational hierarchy design
- IAM, identity federation, and cross-account access patterns
- VPC and network topology design (hub-and-spoke, Transit Gateway, Virtual WAN)
- Private connectivity (Direct Connect, ExpressRoute, Cloud Interconnect, VPN)
- Multi-region and multi-AZ resilience architecture
- Disaster recovery design with documented RPO and RTO
- Hybrid-cloud integration patterns and phased migration sequencing
- Cloud-native data platform design (RDS, Aurora, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Redshift, Snowflake, Databricks)
- Event-driven architecture (Kafka, Kinesis, EventBridge, Pub/Sub, Service Bus)
- Container platform design (EKS, GKE, AKS) and service-mesh selection
- Serverless architecture (Lambda, Cloud Functions, Azure Functions)
- API gateway and edge architecture (CloudFront, Front Door, Cloud CDN)
- Cloud security architecture (encryption, KMS, secrets management)
- Compliance-aligned design (SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI, FedRAMP, GDPR data-residency)
- FinOps-aware architecture (commitment posture, right-sizing, tag governance)
- Observability architecture integrated at the platform layer
- Infrastructure-as-code patterns (Terraform, Pulumi, CloudFormation, Bicep)
- Architecture decision records and reference-architecture libraries
- Architecture review board facilitation
- Mentorship of client-side architects through the engagement lifecycle
Capabilities & Focus Areas
- Cloud reference architecture across AWS, Azure, and GCP
- Landing-zone design, account hierarchies, identity federation
- Network architecture (hub-and-spoke, Transit Gateway, Virtual WAN, segmentation)
- Resilience patterns with documented RPO and RTO
- Hybrid-cloud integration with on-premise estates
- Cloud-native data architecture (managed databases, lakehouses, event streaming)
- Architecture review process design and decision-record discipline
Typical Engagement Patterns
- Four to eight week landing-zone design and implementation engagements
- Twelve to twenty-four week greenfield platform builds
- Architecture review and remediation engagements for mature cloud estates
- Migration architecture for on-premise to cloud transitions (six to eighteen months)
- Architectural oversight retainers for clients running multiple parallel programs
Outcomes Delivered
- Architecture decisions documented in a form that survives team turnover
- Cloud platforms that pass internal security and compliance review on first attempt
- Resilience designs validated against documented failure scenarios
- Cost envelopes set at design time and met at run time
- Client architects equipped to operate the platform without ongoing consulting dependence
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