Senior AWS Cloud Architect

Cognizant

City of Albany (NY)

Remote

USD 110,000 - 160,000

Full time

14 days+

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Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance

Paid holidays plus Paid Time Off

401(k) plan and contribution

Long-term/Short-term Disability

Paid Parental Leave

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Job summary

Cognizant is seeking a Senior AWS Cloud Architect to lead end-to-end VMware-to-AWS migrations with AI-driven tooling. You will define cloud architectures, migration strategies, and governance while guiding architects, engineers, and stakeholders through the transformation program.

The role emphasizes AWS services, IaC with Terraform, and modernizing workloads with ECS/EKS, while ensuring security, scalability, and operational excellence. Remote position with strong leadership expectations.

Qualifications

15+ years of experience in cloud architecture and large-scale migration programs.
Proven leadership of architects, engineers, and stakeholders across transformation projects.
Expertise in AWS landing zones, security, networking, and governance.
Experience with AI-driven migration and automation tools.

Responsibilities

Lead discovery and assessment of infrastructure for AWS migration readiness using industry tools.
Define target AWS landing zone architectures and migration roadmaps with cost models.
Lead AI-driven migration enablement using Agentic platforms and AI services.
Provide technical leadership for VMware workloads migration and modernization to ECS/EKS.
Define IaC standards and reusable cloud patterns, ensuring security and operational excellence.
Mentor and collaborate with cross-functional teams and governance boards.

Skills

Cloud Architecture

AWS Enterprise Architecture

Landing Zones

AWS Organizations

Infrastructure as Code

Terraform

Containers

Amazon ECS

Amazon EKS

Networking

Route 53

Transit Gateway

PrivateLink

API Gateway

Lambda

Serverless

AI & Agentic Automation

Claude LLM

Claude API

Claude Code

Prompt Engineering

AWS Bedrock

Draw.io

MS Visio

Jenkins

Ansible

ServiceNow

Splunk

Dynatrace

Tools

Matilda

AWS Discovery

Device42

AWS MGN

Terraform

Job description

Senior AWS Cloud Architect

Location: Remote

Experience: 15+ years

Please note, this role is not able to offer visa transfer or sponsorship now or in the future*

Role Summary

Lead the end-to-end migration of VMware-based datacenter workloads to AWS using Agentic AI-driven migration solutions. Define cloud architecture, migration strategy, governance standards, and technical execution while providing leadership to architects, engineers, and stakeholders throughout the transformation program.

Key Responsibilities

1. Discovery & Assessment

Lead infrastructure and application discovery using tools such as Matilda, AWS Discovery, Device42, or similar platforms.
Assess servers, applications, databases, storage, and network dependencies for AWS migration readiness.
Analyze infrastructure inventory, utilization, business criticality, risks, and remediation requirements.
Perform migration strategy assessment using the AWS 6R framework (Rehost, Replatform, Refactor, Re-Architect, Retire, Retain).

2. AWS Architecture & Migration Strategy

Define target AWS landing zone architecture aligned with enterprise security, networking, and governance standards.
Develop migration roadmaps, migration waves, sizing recommendations, and cost models.
Design AWS infrastructure solutions leveraging services such as EC2, ECS/EKS, FSx, EFS, Route 53, Transit Gateway, PrivateLink, API Gateway, and Lambda.
Ensure architecture decisions support scalability, resiliency, security, and operational excellence.

3. Agentic AI-Driven Migration Enablement

Lead migration execution using Agentic AI platforms powered by Claude and AWS AI services.
Design and implement AI agents, skills, workflows, and automation tools to accelerate migration activities.
Utilize AI-driven dependency analysis and business prioritization to optimize migration wave planning.
Drive automated migration validation, testing, cutover, and post-migration verification activities.

4. Migration Execution & Modernization

Provide technical leadership for VMware workload migration using AWS MGN and related migration services.
Lead modernization initiatives including containerization and migration to ECS or EKS where appropriate.
Oversee Windows and Linux upgrades, security hardening, patching, and compliance remediation for migrated workloads.
Resolve complex migration challenges and ensure successful workload transition to AWS.

5. Cloud Engineering Standards

Define and enforce Infrastructure as Code (IaC) standards using Terraform.
Establish cloud architecture patterns, reusable modules, migration standards, and deployment best practices.
Integrate CI/CD, automation, and configuration management tools to support cloud operations.

6. Governance & Leadership

Act as trusted advisor to client executives, technical leadership, and Architecture Review Boards.
Lead architecture governance, technical reviews, risk management, and migration decision-making.
Collaborate with application, infrastructure, network, security, and business stakeholders.
Mentor architects and engineering teams across cloud, network, security, and platform domains.

Core Skills