Role: Azure Cloud Architect with Customer-facing skills
Location: McKinney, TX (Hybrid)
Duration: 6+ Months
Experience: 8-15+ years
Role type: Architecture / Platform Engineering
Role Overview
Experienced Azure Cloud / Platform Architect responsible for designing and leading enterprise-scale Azure solutions, with a focus on scalable, secure, and governed cloud platforms. This role owns the technical vision for the Azure foundation - infrastructure, networking, and automation - and provides hands-on leadership to engineering and DevOps teams delivering against that vision.
Key Responsibilities
Platform & Governance
- Design and architect Azure cloud platforms, Landing Zones, management groups, subscriptions, identity, governance, and core platform services.
- Design reusable cloud patterns and platform capabilities that support multiple business units, environments, or acquisitions.
- Define and implement best practices for Azure security, RBAC, PIM, Azure Policy, compliance, monitoring, backup, DR, and FinOps.
- Lead architecture for cloud migration, modernization, platform engineering, and workload onboarding initiatives.
Azure Infrastructure (core strength)
- Architect resilient, scalable compute across VMs, VM Scale Sets, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), App Service, and serverless (Functions, Container Apps).
- Design storage and data platform architecture - Azure Storage tiers, managed disks, Azure Files/NetApp Files, and database services (Azure SQL, PostgreSQL/MySQL Flexible Server, Cosmos DB) - with the right performance, redundancy, and cost profile.
- Define multi-region and high-availability designs using availability zones, paired regions, load balancing, and geo-replication to meet defined RTO/RPO targets.
- Own capacity, performance, resiliency, and cost-optimization strategy across the estate (right-sizing, reservations/savings plans, autoscaling).
- Design observability across the platform - Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, alerting, dashboards, and diagnostics.
- Architect backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity using Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, and cross-region failover patterns.
Azure Networking (core strength)
- Define scalable Azure networking architectures, including hub-and-spoke and Virtual WAN topologies, VNet/subnet design, routing (UDRs, BGP), and multi-region connectivity.
- Architect hybrid and cross-premises connectivity via ExpressRoute, VPN Gateway, and private peering.
- Design DNS strategy across Azure Private DNS, private resolver, and hybrid name resolution.
- Implement private and secure connectivity using Private Link, Private Endpoints, service endpoints, and NAT Gateway.
- Architect network security and edge protection with Azure Firewall, NSGs/ASGs, Web Application Firewall, DDoS Protection, and Application Gateway / Front Door.
- Define micro-segmentation, traffic inspection, and zero-trust network patterns for enterprise workloads.
DevOps, IaC & Automation (core strength)
- Provide technical direction for Terraform/IaC (and/or Bicep), reusable modules, subscription provisioning ("subscription vending"), and standardized platform components.
- Design CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps and/or GitHub Actions for infrastructure and application delivery, including release strategies, approvals, and environment promotion.
- Establish GitOps and configuration-management practices, secrets management (Key Vault), and policy-as-code / compliance-as-code.
- Champion automation-first delivery - drift detection, automated testing of infrastructure, and self-service platform capabilities for application teams.
- Embed DevSecOps practices into pipelines (scanning, gating, supply-chain security).
Leadership & Collaboration
- Work with engineering teams to review designs, resolve technical challenges, and ensure alignment with the Azure Well-Architected Framework and industry best practices.
- Collaborate with customers, Microsoft, and security, networking, DevOps, and application teams to drive architecture decisions and successful delivery.
- Provide technical leadership across Azure compute, networking, storage, databases, integration, and containers as required.
- Mentor engineers and uplift team capability in cloud, networking, and automation.
Required Skills & Experience
- 8-15+ years in IT infrastructure/cloud, with several years in an Azure architecture or senior platform-engineering role.
- Deep, hands-on Azure infrastructure experience across compute, storage, databases, and containers (AKS).
- Strong Azure networking expertise - hub-and-spoke/vWAN, ExpressRoute, Firewall, Private Link, DNS, and routing.
- Proven experience with Terraform (and/or Bicep) and building reusable IaC at scale.
- Solid CI/CD and DevOps background (Azure DevOps and/or GitHub Actions) with an automation-first mindset.
- Experience designing and deploying Azure Landing Zones (Enterprise-Scale / CAF).
- Working knowledge of Entra ID, RBAC, PIM, Azure Policy, and cloud security/governance.
- Strong grasp of the Azure Well-Architected Framework and Cloud Adoption Framework.
- Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills; able to translate architecture into business outcomes.
Certifications
Preferred:
- Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305)
- Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400)
Nice to have:
- Azure Network Engineer Associate (AZ-700)
- Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104)
- HashiCorp Terraform Associate
Nice to Have
- Experience with large-scale migrations, M&A integration, or regulated-industry compliance (ISO 27001, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS).
- Scripting proficiency (PowerShell, Python, Bash).
