Enterprise Cloud Architect (AWS)

Norfolk Southern Corp.; Atlanta, Northern (GA, KY); Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Job summary

Norfolk Southern is seeking an experienced Cloud Architect to lead the design and evolution of secure, scalable, and cost-optimized AWS cloud solutions. This role focuses on reference architectures, guardrails, multi-account landing zones, and CI/CD automation, while partnering across teams to modernize workloads and manage risk and compliance.

The ideal candidate has 5+ years of cloud architecture experience, strong AWS expertise, and hands-on capabilities with Terraform, CloudFormation/CDK,

Qualifications

• 5+ years of cloud architecture or engineering experience.
• Experience defining AWS architecture principles, standards, guardrails, and automation patterns.
• Experience translating business priorities into scalable AWS architecture and roadmap decisions.

Responsibilities

• Design secure, scalable, resilient AWS architectures aligned with business strategy and AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• Define cloud governance, reference architectures, guardrails, standards, and reusable patterns for the AWS environment.
• Assess workloads for modernization, performance, resiliency, security, and cost optimization opportunities.
• Provide technical leadership for AWS landing zones, networking, identity, compute, storage, data, integration, containers, and serverless services.
• Partner with Cybersecurity to embed identity management, encryption, logging, monitoring, vulnerability management, and compliance controls by design.
• Guide application and platform teams on cloud-native design, migration patterns, and architecture decisions.
• Advance infrastructure as code, policy as code, CI/CD, observability, backup, and disaster recovery practices.

Skills

AWS architecture

CI/CD

Infrastructure as Code

Security & compliance

Leadership

Cloud Governance

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

Terraform

ArgoCD

CloudFormation

Git

Job description

Select how often (in days) to receive an alert:

A resume helps you stand out to hiring managers and recruiters; your resume communicates your experience and your brand. While it is not required, we encourage you to include an up-to-date resume along with a completed job application to give you the best opportunity to be considered. A complete resume helps us to better understand your unique background, relevant experiences, and passions. We look forward to learning about you.

Norfolk Southern offers a unique opportunity to be part of our proud legacy that spans nearly 200 years. We are a customer-centric, operations-driven team dedicated to advancing safety, serving communities, and driving innovation for tomorrow's rail. As part of Norfolk Southern, you’ll join a collaborative team where there are opportunities for growth across the organization. We are building a culture where everyone can thrive by owning and driving exceptional results, being humble and leading with trust, serving our customers with excellence, and collaborating and coaching to win.

Primary Purpose:

Norfolk Southern is seeking an experienced Cloud Architect to lead the design and evolution of secure, resilient, scalable, and cost-optimized cloud solutions, with a primary focus on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This role will define reference architectures and guardrails aligned with the AWS Well-Architected Framework; architect multi-account landing zones, identity and access, networking, compute, storage, data, integration, container, serverless, observability, backup, and disaster recovery capabilities; and advance infrastructure as code, policy as code, and CI/CD automation. The architect will partner with application, infrastructure, security, data, FinOps, and business teams to modernize workloads, guide cloud migrations, conduct architecture reviews, manage technical risk and compliance, and evaluate emerging AWS capabilities, including generative AI services where appropriate. The successful candidate will combine deep hands-on AWS expertise with strategic thinking to drive Cloud transformation.

Primary Responsibilities:

• Design secure, scalable, resilient, and cost-optimized AWS architectures aligned with business strategy and the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
• Define cloud governance, reference architectures, guardrails, standards, and reusable patterns for the AWS environment.
• Assess workloads and AWS services for modernization, performance, resiliency, security, and cost optimization opportunities.
• Provide technical leadership for AWS landing zones, networking, identity, compute, storage, data, integration, containers, and serverless services.
• Partner with Cybersecurity to embed identity management, encryption, logging, monitoring, vulnerability management, and compliance controls by design.
• Evaluate emerging AWS capabilities and recommend practical adoption approaches, including generative AI where appropriate.
• Guide application and platform teams on cloud-native design, migration patterns, and architecture decisions.
• Advance infrastructure as code, policy as code, CI/CD, observability, backup, and disaster recovery practices.
• Maintain clear architecture documentation, decision records, standards, and shared knowledge repositories.
• Drive adoption through stakeholder engagement, technical mentoring, and effective change management.

Education Preferred

• Bachelor's degree, preferably in Information Technology or similar

Experience Required

• 5+ years of cloud architecture or engineering experience
• Experience defining AWS architecture principles, standards, guardrails, and automation patterns.
• Experience translating business priorities into scalable AWS architecture and roadmap decisions.

Experience and Soft Skills Preferred

• Strong knowledge of cloud-native design and modernization, including ACK, ArgoCD, Terraform or AWS CloudFormation/CDK, Git-based workflows, CI/CD, containers, serverless, and observability.
• Experience as an Architect performing E2E implementation, deployments, and upgrades.
• Excellent communication and collaboration skills across security, infrastructure, application, data, and business teams.
• Demonstrated technical leadership, sound judgment, problem-solving ability, and influence in complex environments.

Certifications Preferred

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional or Associate

Work Conditions

• Environment: Hybrid on-site (2) days and remote work (3) days per week.
• Shift Work: No
• On-Call: Yes
• Weekend Work: Yes

Company Overview

Since 1827, Norfolk Southern Corporation (NYSE: NSC) and its predecessor companies have safely moved the goods and materials that drive the U.S. economy. Today, it operates a customer-centric and operations-driven freight transportation network. Committed to furthering sustainability, Norfolk Southern helps its customers avoid 15 million tons of yearly carbon emissions by shipping via rail. Its dedicated team members deliver more than 7 million carloads annually, from agriculture to consumer goods, and is the largest rail shipper of auto products and metals in North America. Norfolk Southern also has the most extensive intermodal network in the eastern U.S., serving a majority of the country’s population and manufacturing base, with connections to every major container port on the Atlantic coast as well as the Gulf of Mexico and Great Lakes. Learn more by visiting www.NorfolkSouthern.com .

At Norfolk Southern, we believe in celebrating our individuality. By leveraging the unique backgrounds and viewpoints of our employees, we can create a culture of innovation, respect, and inclusion. We know that employees thrive in a workplace where differing viewpoints, ideas, and experiences are freely shared and valued. As such, we encourage all employees to contribute their distinctive skills and capabilities to our organization.

Equal employment opportunities are available to all applicants regardless of race, color, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetic information, veteran status, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Together, we power progress.

@2023 Norfolk Southern Corp.
650 W. Peachtree Street NW
Atlanta, Georgia 30308
@2023 Norfolk Southern Corp.