Senior Cloud Architect: AI-Ready Platform Design

Robots and Pencils; United States; Remote; USD 73,000 - 101,000; Full time

Job summary

Robots & Pencils is seeking a Senior Cloud Architect to contribute to the design and delivery of complex, multi‑domain systems spanning cloud, data, and AI. This role suits an experienced engineer moving into architectural ownership—hands‑on, shaping architecture decisions and collaborating with senior architects, engineers, and product partners to deliver scalable solutions.

You will work on cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and AI/ML workloads, ensuring systems are secure, maintainable,

Qualifications

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with exposure to architectural decision‑making.
• Working knowledge of cloud platforms and cloud‑native architectures (AWS, Azure, GCP).
• Proficiency in Python and at least one other language commonly used in modern stacks (Java, Scala, TypeScript).
• Hands‑on experience with containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes).
• Experience with infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines (Terraform, CloudFormation, GitHub Actions).
• Working knowledge of relational and NoSQL databases, data pipelines and ETL/ELT concepts (PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Airflow, dbt).
• Familiarity with AI/ML system design, including model deployment, MLOps, and LLM integration (SageMaker, Vertex AI, MLflow, Hugging Face).
• Understanding of microservices, serverless, and event‑driven architectures.
• Awareness of security, compliance, and observability fundamentals (GDPR, HIPAA, SOC2).
• Strong problem‑solving skills and the ability to navigate ambiguous technical challenges.
• Demonstrable usage of AI‑forward tools such as Claude and Cursor.

Responsibilities

• Contribute to architectural design across cloud, data, and AI/ML systems, taking ownership of meaningful components
• Build and integrate cloud‑native solutions including microservices, serverless, and containerized workloads (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, Docker)
• Implement infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation, GitHub Actions)
• Design and contribute to data architectures including pipelines, warehouses, and modeling (e.g., Snowflake, BigQuery, Airflow, dbt)
• Support AI/ML system design, including model serving, MLOps pipelines, and integration of LLM‑based capabilities (e.g., SageMaker, Vertex AI, MLflow)
• Implement monitoring, logging, and observability across deployed systems (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, CloudWatch)
• Bring an AI‑forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship higher‑quality work at pace
• Collaborate with engineers, data, AI, and product teams to translate requirements into sound technical solutions
• Communicate technical tradeoffs and design decisions clearly across functions
• Maintain architecture documentation that supports reproducibility, onboarding, and shared understanding
• Participate actively in design reviews, raising concerns and offering constructive feedback

Skills

Cloud platforms

Python

Java/Scala/TypeScript

Docker

Kubernetes

CI/CD

Infrastructure as Code

Data architectures

AI/ML systems

Security & compliance

MLOps

LLM integration

Tools

Docker

Kubernetes

Terraform

CloudFormation

GitHub Actions

Snowflake

BigQuery

Airflow

dbt

SageMaker

Vertex AI

MLflow

Hugging Face

Job description

Robots & Pencils is seeking a Senior Cloud Architect to contribute to the design and delivery of complex, multi‑domain systems spanning cloud, data, and AI. This role suits an experienced engineer moving into architectural ownership—hands‑on, shaping architecture decisions and collaborating with senior architects, engineers, and product partners to deliver scalable solutions.

You will work on cloud infrastructure, data platforms, and AI/ML workloads, ensuring systems are secure, maintainable,