Solution Architect - Cloud Architecture

Description :

Key Responsibilities :

Architecture & Solution Design :

- Own solution architecture for one or more products/platforms, from requirements architecture delivery operational readiness.

- Define target solution architecture using microservices, APIs, event-driven patterns, and cloud-managed services.

- Produce high-quality architecture artifacts: C4 diagrams, sequence diagrams, deployment views, integration patterns, NFRs, and ADRs (Architecture Decision Records).

- Ensure designs meet non-functional requirements (availability, performance, scalability, security, observability, compliance).

Microservices & Integration :

- Design domain-aligned microservices (DDD principles), API contracts, versioning strategies, and service communication patterns (sync/async).

- Define patterns for API Gateway, service discovery, schema evolution, and backward compatibility.

- Establish resilient integration patterns: event streaming, message queues, sagas, idempotency, retries/circuit breakers.

- Cloud Architecture (AWS/Azure/GCP)

- Architect solutions using cloud-native services for compute, networking, storage, data, and security.

- Define environments and platform approach: landing zones, multi-account/subscription/project strategy, VPC/VNet design, connectivity, secrets, key management.

- Drive cost optimization (FinOps) considerations in design (rightsizing, autoscaling, resource tagging, cost guardrails).

DevOps, Delivery & Automation :

- Partner with engineering to implement CI/CD pipelines, automated testing, and release strategies (blue/green, canary, feature flags).

- Promote Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and platform automation using tools like Terraform/Bicep/CloudFormation, GitOps (ArgoCD/Flux), and pipeline tooling.

- Define operational readiness: SLO/SLI, runbooks, monitoring dashboards, alerting strategies, and incident response integration.

Security, Risk & Compliance (Shift-left) :

- Embed security into architecture: zero trust, IAM least privilege, encryption, secrets management, network segmentation.

- Ensure solutions satisfy regulatory and enterprise controls (audit trails, data retention, privacy, secure SDLC).

- Perform or support threat modeling and security design reviews, ensuring remediation is actionable.

- Governance, Stakeholder Management & Leadership

- Collaborate with enterprise architecture on standards, patterns, and technology roadmaps.

- Influence and mentor teams on best practices in cloud-native engineering, microservices, DevOps, and reliability.

- Facilitate architecture reviews and ensure alignment across multiple squads and dependent systems.

Required Skills & Experience :

Core Technical Skills :

- Strong experience designing distributed systems and microservice architectures (APIs, event-driven, integration patterns).

- Proven cloud architecture experience on AWS/Azure/GCP with hands-on exposure to core building blocks (networking, security, compute, data).

- Strong understanding of container platforms (Kubernetes/EKS/AKS/GKE), service mesh concepts (optional), and container security.

- Experience with DevOps practices: CI/CD, automated testing, IaC, environment automation, release strategies.

- Solid grounding in observability: metrics, logs, traces

Architecture & Delivery :

- Experience creating solution designs that address NFRs: availability, resilience, latency, throughput, DR, and maintainability.

- Ability to define migration/modernization approaches (strangler pattern, re-platform, refactor, re host).

- Strong documentation and decision-making skills: ADRs, trade-off analysis, risk management.

Soft Skills :

- Excellent stakeholder management, communication, and facilitation skills.

- Ability to translate business objectives into technical outcomes, with a pragmatic, delivery-focused approach.

- Comfortable working in agile product teams; able to influence without authority