AWS Resident Architect - Senior Cloud Solutions Architect

Location

Remote / Hybrid / Customer Site (U.S.) - Preferred candidates will reside in NY/NJ

TBD - depending on customer engagements

Full Time / Contract

Ability to obtain Public Sector clearance preferred

We are seeking a Senior AWS Solutions Architect to serve as a Resident Architect for enterprise and public sector customer engagements.

The Resident Architect operates as a strategic cloud advisor rather than an implementation engineer, focusing on architectural governance, platform maturity, and adoption enablement rather than direct workload delivery.

The Resident Architect provides ongoing architectural advisory, governance, and optimization guidance following cloud implementation projects. This role sustains AWS adoption momentum by ensuring architectures remain aligned with AWS best practices, operational maturity goals, and regulatory requirements.

The Resident Architect works closely with customer engineering teams, AWS account teams, and Strategic’s Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to support cloud platform maturity, modernization initiatives, and operational readiness.

Unlike traditional staff augmentation roles, this position focuses on strategic advisory, architectural validation, and adoption enablement, helping organizations extend and operationalize AWS architectures implemented during major transformation programs.

• Serve as the primary cloud architecture advisor for assigned customer environments.
• Validate evolving architectures against the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• Identify architectural drift and recommend remediation strategies.
• Develop and maintain current-state and target-state architecture diagrams.
• Support architecture governance processes and design decision documentation.

• Provide guidance on:
  • Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)
  • CI/CD pipeline architectures
  • Containerization strategies (Kubernetes / ECS / EKS)
  • Landing zone design
  • Multi-account governance
• Recommend automation strategies to improve operational efficiency and reliability.

• Conduct Well-Architected Reviews and operational readiness assessments.
• Support observability, monitoring, logging, and incident response improvements.
• Assist teams in improving reliability, scalability, and performance of cloud workloads.
• Identify cost optimization opportunities and Fin Ops alignment.

• Advise on migration strategies including:
  • Rehost
  • Replatform
  • Refactor
  • Replace
  • Retire
• Support phased modernization roadmaps aligned to business objectives.

• Provide architectural guidance aligned to:
  • FedRAMP
  • CJIS
  • HIPAA
  • FERPA
  • NIST frameworks
• Support Dev Sec Ops  integration and IAM best practices.
• Guide secure architecture patterns including encryption, network segmentation, and logging.

• Mentor internal engineering teams on AWS architecture best practices.
• Conduct architecture workshops and technical briefings.
• Support backlog prioritization for cloud improvements and adoption initiatives.

• Coordinate with:
  • AWS account teams
  • AWS TAMs
  • Strategic delivery leadership
  • Customer engineering leadership
• Provide monthly and quarterly architecture reviews and reporting.

Resident Architects operate within a structured advisory delivery model, typically supporting customers through monthly architectural capacity engagements.

Typical activities include:

• Architecture reviews
• Platform engineering advisory
• Governance and compliance alignment
• Migration advisory
• AWS service adoption guidance

This model enables customers to access senior cloud architecture expertise without requiring a full-time internal hire while maintaining alignment with AWS architectural best practices.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.

Required:

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate

Preferred:

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional
• AWS Dev Ops Engineer Professional
• AWS Security Specialty
• Kubernetes…