11years Cloud Architect - Onsite

GoIntellects Inc.; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 150,000 - 200,000; Full time

Job summary

GoIntellects Inc. seeks a seasoned Cloud Architect to lead Azure-based designs for a Washington, DC government client. You will translate agency requirements into scalable cloud architectures, drive IaC and security baselines, and guide cross-functional teams through large migrations.

The role emphasizes leadership, collaboration with CIOs and OCTO, and ensuring production releases are code-driven. Prior government project experience is preferred and mentorship is expected.

Qualifications

• 8+ years in infrastructure engineering, with at least 5 years designing and building in Microsoft Azure.
• Hands-on Terraform production experience with reusable modules and remote state management.
• Experience building infrastructure CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions.
• Strong knowledge of Microsoft Entra ID, conditional access, and identity governance.
• Experience planning or leading migrations of on-premises workloads to Azure.
• Working knowledge of AWS to operate and troubleshoot existing workloads.
• Experience leading or mentoring engineers, including code review.
• Strong written communication and architecture runbooks are expected.

Responsibilities

• Translate agency business requirements into Azure solution designs and present options, costs, and tradeoffs.
• Lead and document cloud architecture standards, including IaC, change management, and documentation for cloud work.
• Define Azure landing zone design with policy, RBAC, and Defender for Cloud.
• Provide design and support for hybrid connectivity to on-premises data centers.
• Mentor the Azure Cloud Engineer and ensure critical systems have primary and backup owners.
• Maintain current architecture diagrams, runbooks, and documentation.

Skills

Cloud architecture

Leadership

Technical communication

Mentoring

Education

Microsoft Azure certification AZ-305

Tools

Terraform

Azure

Azure DevOps

GitHub Actions

Nerdio Manager

ServiceNow

Job description

Role: Cloud Architect

Client: DC Government

Location: Washington, DC (Onsite)

Job Description

Responsibilities

1. Demonstrates expertise in conveying technical and functional concepts for cloud architecture, translating agency business requirements into clear solution designs, and presenting options, costs, and tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences.
2. Identifies improvements to project standards to achieve high quality services and products, including Infrastructure as Code practices, change management, and documentation standards for all cloud work.
3. Identifies best practices and standards for the use of Microsoft Azure, including the Azure Cloud Adoption Framework and Well-Architected Framework, landing zone design, naming and tagging, Azure Policy, and role-based access control (RBAC).
4. Delivers support and design for cloud technologies that require integration with on-premises systems and networks, including hybrid connectivity to OCTO data centers, hub-and-spoke networking, private endpoints, firewall integration, and identity integration with Microsoft Entra ID.
5. Interacts with executive level business users and technical experts, including agency CIOs, OCTO leadership, OCTO security, and vendor partners, to scope requirements, communicate status, and support decision-making.
6. Functions as the cloud architecture SME for OCTO, providing authoritative guidance on Azure services, security baselines, cost management, and AWS operations.
7. Leads large, complex cloud implementations, including assessment, design, and migration of on-premises virtualized workloads to Azure, from discovery and dependency mapping through target design, sizing, cost modeling, and migration waves.
8. Designs, matures, and owns the Azure landing zone, including management groups, subscriptions, policy, RBAC, and security baselines using Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
9. Ensures production changes are delivered through code and pull requests rather than manual portal changes.
10. Provides architectural oversight of Azure Virtual Desktop environments, including the boundary between Terraform-managed infrastructure and the Nerdio management platform.
11. Defines monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery standards for Azure workloads, and tracks and optimizes cloud spend to support agency chargeback reporting.
12. Supports existing AWS workloads at an operational level.
13. Provides technical direction, code review, and mentoring to the Azure Cloud Engineer, and ensures every critical system has a primary and backup owner.
14. Maintains current architecture diagrams, design decisions, and runbooks. Documentation is a reviewed deliverable.
15. Tracks work in Azure DevOps boards and incidents and changes in ServiceNow.

Minimum Qualifications

1. 8+ years in infrastructure engineering, with at least 5 years designing and building in Microsoft Azure.
2. Demonstrated design and delivery of an enterprise Azure landing zone, including management groups, Azure Policy, RBAC, and hub-and-spoke networking.
3. Hands-on Terraform experience in production, including reusable modules and remote state management.
4. Experience building infrastructure CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps (or GitHub Actions with transferable skills).
5. Strong knowledge of Microsoft Entra ID, conditional access, and identity governance.
6. Experience planning or leading migrations of on-premises virtualized workloads (VMware or similar) to Azure.
7. Working knowledge of AWS, sufficient to operate and troubleshoot existing workloads (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3).
8. Experience leading or mentoring engineers, including code review.
9. Strong written communication, with a track record of clear architecture documentation and runbooks.

Preferred Qualifications

1. Experience in state, local, or federal government IT environments.
2. Hands-on experience with Azure Virtual Desktop and/or Nerdio Manager for Enterprise.
3. Experience with Azure.
4. Familiarity with compliance frameworks such as NIST 800-53, CJIS, or FedRAMP.
5. Experience with Azure cost management, reservations, and chargeback models.
6. Familiarity with ServiceNow for incident and change management.

Minimum Education/Certification Requirements

Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305), or ability to obtain within 6 months of start.

Preferred

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate or higher; HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate.