The Cloud Solutions Architect is responsible for designing and delivering scalable, secure, and resilient cloud architectures on Microsoft Azure. The role focuses on enabling organizations to migrate, modernize, and optimize their workloads on the cloud by defining architecture strategies, implementing cloud foundations, and enabling DevOps practices that support automated and reliable delivery.
Roles and Responsibilities
- Architectural Design: Design end-to-end cloud architectures on Microsoft Azure supporting enterprise workloads and cloud-native applications.
- Cloud Migration: Lead workload migration from on-premises or other cloud platforms to Azure using the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and best practices.
- DevOps & Automation: Define DevOps and platform engineering architectures including CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps/GitHub), infrastructure automation, and release management.
- Migration Strategy: Define migration strategies including rehost, replatform, refactor, rebuild, and replace approaches (the 5 R's).
- Landing Zones: Design and implement Azure Landing Zones aligned with security, governance, and compliance requirements using Azure Policy and Blueprints.
- Infrastructure Design: Architect scalable and resilient infrastructure solutions leveraging Azure services such as Azure Virtual Machines, Azure SQL, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and Azure App Service.
- Assessment & Planning: Lead migration assessments including application discovery, dependency mapping, and migration wave planning using tools like Azure Migrate.
- Infrastructure-as-Code: Collaborate with engineering teams to implement IaC using tools such as Terraform or Bicep.
- Operational Excellence: Ensure operational readiness through monitoring, logging, and reliability best practices using Azure Monitor and Log Analytics.
- Technical Leadership: Provide technical leadership and architecture guidance throughout cloud migration and modernization programs.
- Pre-Sales Support: Support pre-sales activities including architecture workshops and technical proposal development.
- Capability Building: Contribute to internal capability development, best practices, and reusable architecture patterns.
- Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.
- Experience: 5+ years of experience in cloud architecture, infrastructure engineering, or cloud consulting roles.
- Technical Expertise: Strong experience designing solutions on the Microsoft Azure Platform.
- Certification: Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305).
- Migration Leadership: Experience leading enterprise workload migrations to public cloud environments.
- DevOps Proficiency: Experience implementing DevOps practices including CI/CD pipelines and infrastructure automation.
- Cloud Fundamentals: Strong understanding of cloud infrastructure including compute, storage, networking, and Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD).
- Containerization: Experience with container technologies such as Docker and Kubernetes (AKS preferred).
- Tooling: Experience implementing Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform, Bicep, or ARM templates.
- Networking: Strong understanding of cloud networking including VNet design, ExpressRoute, VPN Gateways, and security controls.
- Communication: Excellent communication skills and ability to present architecture solutions to technical and business stakeholders.
Preferred Qualifications
- Resiliency & DR: Strong understanding of cloud network architecture including Azure Site Recovery (ASR) and replication methodologies.
- Core Services: Deep expertise in core infrastructure services (e.g., AD DS, DNS, DHCP, ADFS).
- Discovery Tools: Experience with automated infrastructure discovery and application dependency mapping tools.
- FinOps: Knowledge of cloud cost management and optimization strategies, including Azure Cost Management and FinOps principles
- Agile & DevSecOps: Familiarity with agile software development practices, DevSecOps integration, and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab, Jenkins).
- Databases: Familiarity with database technologies (e.g., SQL Server, Oracle, SAP HANA on Azure).
- Multi-Cloud: Additional architecture certifications in AWS or GCP (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect, GCP Professional Architect).
- Compliance: Knowledge of local and international compliance and regulatory frameworks (NCA, SAMA, ISO 27001).
- Consulting: Experience in a client-facing, consulting role is highly desirable.
- Observability: Experience with observability and monitoring platforms (e.g., Application Insights, Dynatrace, Datadog).