Senior Enterprise AWS Platform Architect

Cognizant; Providence (RI); On-site; USD 165,000 - 192,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Medical/Dental/Vision/Life Insurance

Paid holidays plus PTO

401(k) plan and contributions

Disability insurance

Paid Parental Leave

Employee Stock Purchase Plan

Job summary

Cognizant is seeking an Enterprise Chief Architect, AWS Platform, to shape cloud strategy, de-risk major technology investments, and establish architecture standards. You will guide senior executives and ARBs, lead 10–15 senior architects, and drive governance, security, and modernization across AWS environments.

You will stay hands-on for architecture reviews, define secure connectivity, and mentor teams across on-site/offshore delivery. A current AWS certification is expected.

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.

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.
• 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

Executive leadership

AWS Networking

Security governance

Terraform

AWS CDK

Cloud transformation

EC2/ECS/EKS

Executive communication

C-level engagement

Education

Bachelor's degree

Tools

AWS CloudFormation

GitLab CI/CD

Job description

Cognizant is seeking an Enterprise Chief Architect, AWS Platform, to shape cloud strategy, de-risk major technology investments, and establish architecture standards. You will guide senior executives and ARBs, lead 10–15 senior architects, and drive governance, security, and modernization across AWS environments.

You will stay hands-on for architecture reviews, define secure connectivity, and mentor teams across on-site/offshore delivery. A current AWS certification is expected.