Required Qualifications :

- Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related field.

- 16+ years of experience in IT architecture or software engineering.

- 8+ years of hands-on GCP experience in architecture design and implementation.

- Mastery of GCP architecture design spanning all core Google Cloud Architecture Framework pillars.

- Proven track record leading enterprise-scale cloud architecture programs.

- Extensive experience with complex cross-service integrations (REST, gRPC, OpenAPI, API Gateway/Apigee, Pub/Sub, Managed Service for Apache Kafka, Cloud Tasks, Workflows, Eventarc).

- Expert-level proficiency in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Config Connector, Deployment Manager).

- Strategic experience in FinOps, cost governance, and performance engineering using Cloud Billing reports, the Recommender, and Budgets & Alerts.

- Experience architecting multi-project Landing Zones with Resource Manager, Organization Policy Service, and the Cloud Foundation Toolkit.

- Strong understanding of application security, identity management (Cloud IAM, Cloud Identity, Identity Platform), and cloud governance (Security Command Center, Assured Workloads, Policy Intelligence).

- Hands-on experience designing GenAI/agentic architectures using Vertex AI, Gemini, RAG pipelines, and Vector Search.

- Strong communication, leadership, and stakeholder management skills.

- Proven ability to drive architectural decisions at the executive level.

- Knowledge of Agile Methodology and Practices.

- Deep experience with microservices architecture, serverless patterns, distributed system design, and event-driven design.

Technical Skills :

- Languages : Python, ReactJS/Angular, TypeScript, Bash.

- Compute & Serverless : Cloud Run, GKE Standard/Autopilot, Cloud Run functions, App Engine, Compute Engine fundamentals, Eventarc, Workflows.

- Architecture & Design : Domain-Driven Design (DDD), Microservices, Modular Monolith, Event-Driven Architecture, Hexagonal/Clean Architecture, Twelve-Factor Apps, distributed systems.

- API Integration & Architecture : REST, gRPC, OpenAPI, API Gateway, Apigee, Pub/Sub, Managed Service for Apache Kafka, Cloud Tasks.

- Distributed System Patterns : Saga, Transactional Outbox, Idempotency, Retry/Backoff, Circuit Breaker, CQRS, Event Sourcing (where justified), caching, eventual consistency.

- Data Architecture : Cloud SQL/PostgreSQL, Spanner, Firestore, Bigtable, Memorystore/Redis, Cloud Storage; BigQuery awareness.

- Container Architecture : Docker, Kubernetes, GKE, Helm, autoscaling, Ingress/Gateway API, Cloud Service Mesh.

- DevSecOps : Terraform, Cloud Build, Cloud Deploy, Artifact Registry, GitHub Actions, Helm, Argo CD.

- Reliability & Observability : Cloud Logging, Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Trace, OpenTelemetry, SLI/SLO, error budgets, HA/DR, RTO/RPO.

- GenAI Architecture : Vertex AI, Gemini APIs, RAG Engine, Vector Search, embeddings, grounding, Agent Development Kit (ADK), agentic workflows, evaluation, guardrails.

- AI Development Tools : Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot.

Must-Have Skills :

- GCP application architecture

- GKE

- Cloud Run

- Microservices

- Apigee

- Cloud Spanner

- Gemini

Nice to Have :

- Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect or specialty certifications.

- DevOps experience (CI/CD pipelines using Cloud Build, GitHub Actions, Jenkins).

- Experience with GCP migration tools (Migrate for Compute Engine, Database Migration Service, Storage Transfer Service, BigQuery Data Transfer Service).

- Experience building and scaling architecture practices within consulting organizations.

- Experience with the Google Cloud Well-Architected Partner ecosystem and conducting formal Architecture Framework reviews