Cloud Architect

Rishabh RPO; Washington (District of Columbia); On-site; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Rishabh RPO seeks an expert Cloud Architect in Washington DC to lead enterprise Azure implementations, landing zone design, and IaC-driven migrations from on-prem to Azure. You will guide governance, security baselines, and cost management, collaborating with CIOs and vendors.

Strong Azure, Terraform, and DevOps experience is required. The role emphasizes architecture documentation, runbooks, and ongoing optimization of cloud spend, with a focus on hybrid integrations and Well-Architected

Qualifications

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

Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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.
• 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).
• 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.
• 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.
• Functions as the cloud architecture SME for OCTO, providing authoritative guidance on Azure services, security baselines, cost management, and AWS operations.
• 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.
• Designs, matures, and owns the Azure landing zone, including management groups, subscriptions, policy, RBAC, and security baselines using Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
• Ensures production changes are delivered through code and pull requests rather than manual portal changes.
• Provides architectural oversight of Azure Virtual Desktop environments, including the boundary between Terraform-managed infrastructure and the Nerdio management platform.
• Defines monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery standards for Azure workloads, and tracks and optimizes cloud spend to support agency chargeback reporting.
• Supports existing AWS workloads at an operational level.
• Provides technical direction, code review, and mentoring to the Azure Cloud Engineer, and ensures every critical system has a primary and backup owner.
• Maintains current architecture diagrams, design decisions, and runbooks. Documentation is a reviewed deliverable.
• Tracks work in Azure DevOps boards and incidents and changes in ServiceNow.

Skills

Azure cloud architecture

Terraform

Azure landing zone design

Azure DevOps / GitHub Actions

Entra ID / identity governance

Cloud cost management

Hybrid cloud integration

Mentoring engineers / code reviews

Documentation / runbooks

AWS knowledge

Stakeholder communication

Education

Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305)

AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate

HashiCorp Terraform Associate

Tools

Terraform

Azure DevOps

GitHub Actions

Nerdio Manager for Enterprise

ServiceNow

Azure Virtual Desktop

Job description

Position Title & Code: Cloud Architect

Location: Washington DC 20003

Project End Date: 12/31/2026 (With Possible extension to next fiscal year)

Responsibilities

• 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.
• 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.
• 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).
• 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.
• 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.
• Functions as the cloud architecture SME for OCTO, providing authoritative guidance on Azure services, security baselines, cost management, and AWS operations.
• 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.
• Designs, matures, and owns the Azure landing zone, including management groups, subscriptions, policy, RBAC, and security baselines using Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
• Ensures production changes are delivered through code and pull requests rather than manual portal changes.
• Provides architectural oversight of Azure Virtual Desktop environments, including the boundary between Terraform-managed infrastructure and the Nerdio management platform.
• Defines monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery standards for Azure workloads, and tracks and optimizes cloud spend to support agency chargeback reporting.
• Supports existing AWS workloads at an operational level.
• Provides technical direction, code review, and mentoring to the Azure Cloud Engineer, and ensures every critical system has a primary and backup owner.
• Maintains current architecture diagrams, design decisions, and runbooks. Documentation is a reviewed deliverable.
• Tracks work in Azure DevOps boards and incidents and changes in ServiceNow.

Minimum Qualifications

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

Preferred Qualifications

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