Cloud Solutions Architect

Title: Cloud Solutions Architect

Location: Washington, DC (Hybrid-3x/week)

Duration: Long term contract

Description:

The IT/Cloud Solutions Architect will design, deploy, and migrate systems for IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS environments. The solutions architect is responsible for identification and selection of appropriate cloud services based on requirements and constraints, has deep subject matter expertise, and can evaluate new technologies for fit in current infrastructure architecture.

The incumbent shall perform the following duties and responsibilities:

• Maintain in-depth knowledge of company's strategic business plans.
• Provide architectural consulting expertise, direction, and assistance to systems analysts, IT cloud engineers, and other systems architects.
• Document and develop in-depth knowledge of company's existing IT cloud architecture/infrastructure, and technology portfolio.
• Develop and manage an IT cloud infrastructure capacity plan.
• Develop, document, communicate, and enforce a cloud technology standards policy.
• Conduct research on emerging cloud technologies in support of infrastructure development efforts and recommend technologies that will increase cost effectiveness and infrastructure flexibility.
• Develop, document, make recommendations, and communicate plans for investing in IT cloud infrastructure, including analysis of cost reduction opportunities.
• Design, develop, and oversee implementation of end-to-end IT cloud integrated systems.
• Develop and execute test plans to check IT cloud infrastructure and systems technical performance. Report on findings and make recommendations for improvement.
• Architect, design, deploy, and manage Azure Gov IaaS, SaaS & PaaS services, and solutions.
• Liaise effectively with 3rd party suppliers and support providers to ensure issues and solutions are provided within expected service levels.
• Create supporting documentation for various audiences with the ability to multi-task and be creative and innovative in a dynamic, fast paced team environment.
• Knowledge of RESTful API, Web Services, XML, JSON.

Education & certifications:

• Bachelor's or Master's Degree in Information Technology or Computer Science and
• Equivalent combination of education and successful work experience (10 years) and
• Microsoft AZURE Certification in specialized areas is a Must

Qualifications:

• Excellent understanding of typical multi-tier architectures: web servers, caching, application servers, load balancers, and storage.
• Understanding of Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) and NoSQL.
• Knowledge of message queuing and Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).
• Familiarity with loose coupling and stateless systems.
• Understanding of different consistency models in distributed systems.
• Knowledge of Content Delivery Networks (CDN).
• Hands-on experience with core LAN/WAN network technologies.
• Experience with route tables, access control lists, firewalls, NAT, HTTP, DNS, IP and OSI Network.
• Knowledge of RESTful Web Services, XML, JSON.
• Familiarity with the software development lifecycle.
• Work experience with information and application security concepts, mechanisms, and tools.
• Awareness of end-user computing and collaborative technologies.
• Large-scale distributed systems architecture.
• System performance tuning.
• Information and application security concepts including public key encryption, remote access, access credentials, and certificate-based authentication.
• Experience implementing DevOPS practices including Infrastructure-As-Code (IAC), Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment (CI / CD), and automated testing.
• Knowledge of network technologies as they relate to AWS.
• Knowledge of security policies, network security, data security and security event management to adopt cloud security services
• Experience in Terraform and/or Ansible and/or Azure Gov cloud / AWS CloudFormation IaC tools.
• Script Experience - PowerShell, Python, Bash, or similar. Pyspark experience preferred.
• Experience with relational databases such as MS SQL

Personal Attributes

• Ability to exercise independent judgment and take action on it.
• Excellent analytical and creative problem-solving skills.
• Excellent listening, interpersonal, written, and oral communication skills.
• Logical and efficient, with keen attention to detail.
• Highly self-motivated and directed.
• Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks while under pressure.
• Strong customer service orientation.
• Experience working in a team-oriented, collaborative environment.
• Ability to effectively prioritize and execute tasks while under pressure.
• Strong customer service orientation.
• Experience working in a team-oriented, collaborative environment.