Google Cloud Platform Architect

Position Title: Google Cloud Platform Architect

Experience Required: 13+ Years

Location: Denver, CO - St Louis, MO Charlotte, NC (Onsite 3 days in any one of these locations)

Employment Type: Contract

Role Overview:

We are seeking an experienced Google Cloud Platform Architect with 13+ years of IT experience, including extensive hands-on expertise in Google Cloud Platform, cloud-native solution design, data platforms, and enterprise-scale architecture. The ideal candidate will drive end-to-end cloud strategy, design scalable systems, ensure operational excellence, and lead cloud transformation initiatives across cross-functional teams.

Key Responsibilities:

• Cloud Architecture & Solution Design
• Design, architect, and implement scalable, secure, and highly available solutions on Google Cloud Platform (Google Cloud Platform).
• Define Cloud architecture standards, best practices, frameworks, and reference models.
• Lead end-to-end solution design conversations covering compute, storage, networking, CI/CD, security, observability, and data layers.
• Develop architecture diagrams, solution documents, and design specifications.

Google Cloud Platform Services & Expertise:

• Extensive hands-on experience with key Google Cloud Platform services including:
• Compute Engine, GKE, Cloud Run, App Engine
• Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Cloud SQL, Spanner
• Dataflow, Dataproc, Pub/Sub, Composer
• Cloud Functions, IAM, VPC, Cloud Load Balancing
• Optimize cloud resources for performance, scalability, governance, and cost efficiency.

Data & Application Modernization:

• Architect large-scale distributed systems, data platforms, and modernization initiatives.
• Lead migration of applications, databases, and workloads from on-prem or multi-cloud to Google Cloud Platform.
• Enable cloud-native development using microservices, serverless, container orchestration, and DevOps tools.

Security, Governance & Compliance:

• Implement Cloud IAM policies, security controls, network architecture, encryption, and compliance measures.
• Ensure adherence to enterprise cloud governance, cost management, tagging, and resource standardization.

DevOps & Automation:

• Build automated CI/CD pipelines using Cloud Build, Cloud Deploy, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or similar.
• Implement Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, Deployment Manager, or Ansible.
• Drive automation and standardization across environment provisioning and deployment.

Leadership & Collaboration:

• Serve as a trusted advisor to stakeholders, product teams, and client executives.
• Lead technical teams, conduct design reviews, and mentor engineers and developers.

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams (Data, Security, Networking, Product, QA) to drive digital transformation.

Required Qualifications:

• 13+ years of IT experience with significant focus on cloud architecture, distributed systems, and solution design.
• 5+ years of hands-on Google Cloud Platform experience in architecture, engineering, or platform leadership roles.
• Strong expertise in infrastructure, networking, cloud security, and DevOps practices.
• Proficiency in containerization (Docker), orchestration (Kubernetes/GKE), and serverless computing.
• Strong knowledge of data engineering concepts, ETL, data pipelines, analytics, and real-time processing.
• Experience with Terraform, CI/CD pipelines, GitOps principles.
• Excellent communication, client interaction, and documentation skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Google Cloud Professional Architect or similar Google Cloud Platform certifications.
• Experience with multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud architectures (AWS/Azure).
• Knowledge of AI/ML services on Google Cloud Platform (Vertex AI, BigQuery ML).
• Experience leading large cloud transformation or modernization programs.