Senior Cloud Architect

Senior Cloud Architect
Location: Fort Mill, SC

in person interview

Role Summary:
Senior Cloud Architect (Enterprise)

Role Summary
The Senior Cloud Architect is responsible for defining, designing, and governing secure, scalable cloud platforms and solutions across the enterprise. This role leads end to end architecture for cloud modernization, migration, and platform engineering initiatives, aligning technology strategies with business outcomes. The architect partners with security, networking, data, application, and operations teams to deliver reliable, compliant, and cost efficient cloud services at scale.
Key Responsibilities
Cloud Strategy & Roadmap
Define cloud strategy, reference architectures, and target-state blueprints (landing zones, networking, security, identity, observability).
Lead application portfolio assessments and develop modernization/migration roadmaps (rehost, replatform, refactor).
Establish cloud governance (guardrails, policies, tagging standards, FinOps practices) aligned to business and compliance requirements.
Drive architecture reviews and act as a trusted advisor to engineering and business stakeholders.
Platform Architecture & Engineering
Design and oversee enterprise landing zones (e.g., AWS Control Tower / Organizations, SCPs, IAM, multi account patterns).
Architect multi VPC, multi region network topologies with Transit Gateway/peering, private connectivity (Direct Connect / VPN), and segmented network zones.
Define secure baseline patterns for compute (EKS/ECS, EC2), storage (S3, EBS, EFS), databases (RDS/Aurora/DynamoDB), messaging/streaming (MSK/Kinesis/SQS), and serverless (Lambda/API Gateway).
Implement IaC at scale (Terraform) and codify standards via reusable modules and pipelines.
Security, Risk & Compliance (Security by Design)
Embed defense in depth controls (network security, encryption, KMS, certificate management, secrets management).
Define identity & access foundations (IAM, SSO/Identity Center, RBAC/ABAC) and enforce least privilege.
Build continuous compliance with controls mapping (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GxP, PCI) and automated audit evidence.
Partner with InfoSec, Risk, and Audit to ensure policies, exception handling, and incident response are operationalized.
Observability, SRE & Operational Readiness
Architect end to end observability (CloudWatch/Datadog/PrometheGrafana/Splunk) with golden signals, SLIs/SLOs, and runbooks.
Champion reliability engineering practices (resiliency patterns, chaos testing, DR/BCP, RTO/RPO).
Define operational boundaries and ownership models (platform vs. product teams) and ensure Day 2 operations readiness.
Delivery Excellence & Governance
Establish architecture review boards (ARBs), decision records (ADRs), and standards catalogs.
Guide solution designs, build vs. buy decisions, cost models, and capacity planning.
Promote an automation first approach (CI/CD, GitOps, policy as code) to improve speed, quality, and consistency.
Track platform KPIs/OKRs, cloud cost optimization (FinOps), and capacity/performance baselines.
Leadership & Enablement
Mentor cloud engineers, solution architects, and developers; build a strong Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE).
Lead cross functional workshops and technical deep dives; evangelize best practices and reusable patterns.
Influence vendor selection, license strategies, and partner ecosystems.
Communicate complex concepts clearly to executive and non technical stakeholders.

Required Qualifications
10+ years in architecture/engineering with 5+ years focused on cloud (AWS preferred; Azure/Google Cloud Platform a plus).
Proven delivery of enterprise landing zones, multi account structures, and secure network designs at scale.
Strong expertise in IaC (Terraform), configuration management (Ansible), and CI/CD (e.g., GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins).
Deep knowledge of cloud security (IAM, KMS, network security, secrets management), compliance frameworks, and audit processes.
Hands on experience with container platforms (EKS/ECS, Docker, Kubernetes) and/or serverless architectures.
Solid understanding of SRE practices, observability, and incident/problem management in production environments.
Expertise translating business needs into target architectures, roadmaps, and measurable outcomes.
Excellent communication, stakeholder management, and leadership skills.

Preferred Qualifications
AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional (or equivalent expert level certification).
Experience in regulated industries (financial services, healthcare/life sciences, pharma/GxP).
Background in data/analytics platforms (e.g., SAS, Databricks, EMR, MSK/Kinesis) and data governance.
Knowledge of FinOps practices and cost optimization strategies.
Experience integrating GenAI/LLM services securely (guardrails, data privacy, governance).
Familiarity with Zero Trust architectures and modern identity patterns.

Core Competencies
Enterprise Architecture: Reference architectures, patterns, standards, and governance.
Security by Design: Threat modeling, defense in depth, compliance mapping.
Platform Engineering: Repeatable, automated platform services with strong developer experience.
Systems Thinking: Holistic view across applications, data, security, and operations.
Leadership & Influence: Coaching, decision facilitation, and stakeholder alignment.
Communication: Executive storytelling, clear design documentation, and persuasive presentations.
**Tech Suite: Angular, .NET, C#, Python, SQL Server, Snowflake, Kafka, Camunda, API Gateways, Terraform, Helm, SwaggerHub, Dynatrace, ELK, CloudWatch.