Chief AWS Platform Architect & Enterprise Strategy Lead

Cognizant; Augusta (ME); On-site; USD 165,000 - 192,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance

Paid holidays plus Paid Time Off

401(k) plan and contributions

Long-term/Short-term Disability

Paid Parental Leave

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Job summary

Cognizant is seeking an Enterprise Chief Architect, AWS Platform, to shape cloud strategy, de-risk investments, and set architecture standards for the organization. You will mentor a team of 10–15 architects across Cloud, Network, and Security, guiding critical design decisions and ensuring secure, scalable cloud solutions.

You will lead architecture reviews, drive governance, and define patterns for enterprise-scale AWS environments while collaborating with AWS and strategic partners.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of Infrastructure, Cloud, Networking, and Enterprise Architecture experience.
• 8+ years of AWS architecture, cloud transformation, and technical leadership experience.
• Proven experience operating at the Principal Architect, Lead Architect, Chief Architect, or equivalent senior technical leadership level.
• Experience leading and developing teams of 10+ Architects within global delivery organizations.
• Strong executive presence with demonstrated success engaging C-level stakeholders, business executives, senior technology leaders, and Architecture Review Boards.
• Deep expertise across AWS Networking, Security, Infrastructure, Automation, Modernization, Governance, and Resilience services.
• Hands-on experience designing enterprise-scale AWS networking architectures including Transit Gateway, Cloud WAN, Direct Connect, VPN, Route 53, PrivateLink, and BGP routing.
• Strong experience implementing Infrastructure-as-Code using Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, and AWS CDK.
• Experience establishing cloud governance programs, security guardrails, and operating models across large AWS environments.
• Proven experience architecting and governing multi-account, multi-region AWS environments.
• Experience leading large-scale AWS modernization and cloud transformation initiatives.
• At least one current AWS certification, such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Certified Advanced Networking, AWS Certified Security, or an equivalent enterprise cloud certification. Additional AWS certifications are highly valued.

Responsibilities

• Serve as the senior technical authority and primary point of accountability for AWS Infrastructure Delivery and Cloud Transformation initiatives.
• Act as a trusted advisor to executive stakeholders, client leadership teams, and Architecture Review Boards (ARBs) on cloud strategy, modernization, security, governance, risk management, and technology investment decisions.
• Lead, mentor, and develop a team of 10-15 Cloud, Network, and Security Architects across onsite and offshore delivery teams while raising architectural maturity and technical excellence across the organization.
• Establish enterprise architecture standards, governance frameworks, reusable design patterns, and AWS best practices that balance security, resilience, scalability, performance, and cost efficiency.
• Stay hands-on by leading architecture reviews, validating solution designs, resolving complex technical challenges, and guiding strategic implementation decisions.
• Architect and govern enterprise-scale multi-account, multi-region AWS environments utilizing AWS Organizations and shared services models.
• Design advanced AWS networking architectures leveraging Shared Services VPCs, Transit Gateway, Cloud WAN, VPC Peering, Route 53, PrivateLink, Security Groups, Network ACLs, and AWS Network Firewall.
• Define secure hybrid-cloud connectivity strategies using AWS Direct Connect, VPN, and BGP routing to support enterprise workloads across cloud and on-premises environments.
• Lead cloud security architecture and governance initiatives utilizing Service Control Policies (SCPs), AWS Security Hub, GuardDuty, AWS Config, Network Firewall, and organizational guardrails.
• Drive threat modeling, compliance alignment, security reviews, audit readiness, and risk management programs across highly regulated and mission-critical environments.
• Lead Infrastructure-as-Code adoption and standardization using Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, and AWS CDK while establishing deployment governance and automation frameworks.
• Drive cloud engineering excellence through GitLab-based CI/CD automation, platform standards, and infrastructure lifecycle management practices.
• Partner with customer and engineering teams to lead migration, refactoring, modernization, and platform engineering initiatives across ECS, EKS, and Fargate environments.
• Define cloud-native architecture patterns and engineering standards that improve agility, accelerate delivery, and increase operational reliability.
• Architect resilience and business continuity solutions using AWS Resilience Hub, AWS Fault Injection Simulator (FIS), disaster recovery frameworks, and multi-region availability strategies.
• Provide architectural leadership for scalability, performance, reliability, and operational excellence across ECS, EKS, Lambda, RDS, and CloudFront environments.
• Create and maintain architecture roadmaps, executive presentations, reference architectures, governance documentation, and strategic technology recommendations.
• Collaborate with AWS, strategic partners, vendors, and customer stakeholders to align technology solutions with business objectives and long-term transformation goals.

Skills

AWS Networking

Architecture Leadership

Cloud Strategy

Executive Stakeholder Engagement

Terraform

AWS CloudFormation

AWS CDK

Security Governance

Multi-Account AWS

Team Mentoring

Tools

Terraform

AWS CloudFormation

AWS CDK

GitLab CI/CD

Job description

Cognizant is seeking an Enterprise Chief Architect, AWS Platform, to shape cloud strategy, de-risk investments, and set architecture standards for the organization. You will mentor a team of 10–15 architects across Cloud, Network, and Security, guiding critical design decisions and ensuring secure, scalable cloud solutions.

You will lead architecture reviews, drive governance, and define patterns for enterprise-scale AWS environments while collaborating with AWS and strategic partners.