AWS Lead Cloud Architect

Cognition is a leading provider of connected advertising solutions, empowering businesses to reach their target audiences with precision and drive measurable results. Our innovative platform seamlessly blends advanced technology with data-driven insights, enabling advertisers to optimize their advertising campaigns across various channels effectively.

We are ideally seeking local candidates in Jacksonville, but for the right candidate, we would be willing to bring someone who is based elsewhere.

We are seeking a highly experienced and visionary Lead Cloud Architect with a proven track record of 5-10 years in designing, implementing, and managing robust cloud solutions across both Amazon Web Services (AWS). In this critical role, you will be responsible for defining our cloud architecture strategy, ensuring operational excellence, security, and cost optimization for our evolving infrastructure. You will be a key leader, guiding our engineering teams and shaping the future of our cloud environment.

• Lead the design and evolution of highly available, scalable, secure, and cost-effective cloud architectures on AWS.
• Develop and maintain cloud architectural blueprints, standards, and best practices.
• Translate business requirements into technical cloud solutions, considering long-term scalability and maintainability.

• Oversee and actively participate in the implementation of complex cloud infrastructure and applications using Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform, Cloud Formation).
• Automate deployment, scaling, and management of cloud resources.
• Ensure seamless integration of cloud services with on‑premise systems where applicable.

• Conduct regular audits of existing cloud environments to identify areas for improvement in performance, security, cost efficiency, and compliance.
• Implement strategies for continuous cost optimization across AWS, including reserved instances, spot instances, and rightsizing.
• Monitor cloud resource utilization and health, establishing proactive alerts and remediation strategies.

• Design and enforce robust security controls and best practices within the cloud infrastructure (e.g., IAM, network security, data encryption, security groups/firewalls).
• Ensure compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements (e.g., SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR).
• Implement and manage disaster recovery and business continuity plans for cloud services.
• Act as a subject matter expert and provide technical leadership and mentorship to development and operations teams.
• Foster a culture of cloud best practices, documentation, innovation, and continuous learning.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive architectural consistency and efficiency.
• Stay abreast of new AWS services and features, evaluating their potential applicability to our environment.
• Engage with cloud service providers and third‑party vendors as needed.

• 5-10 years of progressive experience in Cloud Architecture, with at least 3-5 years focused specifically on AWS.
• 1-3 years of Google Cloud Platform experience is a plus.
• Deep hands‑on experience with core AWS services (EC2, S3, RDS, VPC, Lambda, SQS, SES, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, Cloud Front, Cloud Watch, Code Deploy, Glue, IAM, SNS, Dynamo
  
  DB, Athena, and more).

• Hands‑on experience with core GCP services (Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, VPC, GKE, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, Cloud Monitoring, IAM, Big Query, Dataflow).
• Expert proficiency with Terraform is essential. Experience with Cloud Formation (and GCP Deployment Manager) is a strong plus.
• Strong scripting skills (e.g., Python, Bash, Go) for automation and operational tasks.
• In‑depth understanding of cloud networking concepts (VPC, subnets, routing, load balancers, VPN, interconnects, DNS).
• Solid understanding of cloud security principles, best practices, and tools (WAFs, IDS/IPS, security groups, IAM policies).
• Extensive experience with Docker and Kubernetes (EKS/GKE).
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and tools (e.g., Jenkins, Git Lab CI, AWS…