Cloud Infrastructure Architect

The Cloud Infrastructure Architect is responsible for designing, governing, and assuring end-to-end infrastructure architectures spanning on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments. The role focuses on creating secure, resilient, scalable, and cost optimised platforms that enable modern applications, data platforms, and integration workloads.

Operating in a consulting and systems integration context, this architect ensures seamless integration between on-premises platforms and hyperscaler cloud services, leveraging native Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) capabilities while maintaining enterprise-grade security, operability, and resilience

Core Skills and Expertise

• Deep knowledge of Azure, AWS, and GCP infrastructure services.
• AI-ready infrastructure foundations designing for scalable compute (including accelerators where required), high-throughput networking, secure data access, and platform services to support modern analytics and AI workloads.
• Hybrid networking and connectivity patterns (connectivity, routing, segmentation, firewalls, and load balancing).
• Identity, security, and access integration across on-premises and cloud.
• Landing zones and platform foundations (accounts/subscriptions, environments, zoning, and policy).
• High availability, disaster recovery (DR), and business continuity design.
• Cost optimisation and operational governance (FinOps).

Experience

• 12–18+ years of overall information technology (IT) experience.
• 8–12+ years in infrastructure, cloud, or hybrid architecture roles.
• Experience designing infrastructure for AI use cases, including machine learning (ML) platforms, workload placement considerations, data access patterns, and controls to support safe and reliable operation.
• Strong experience in consulting or systems integration organisations.
• Proven track record designing on-premises and cloud hybrid platforms, including large-scale enterprise and regulated environments.
• Experience of designing and implementing Recovery Time and Recovery Point objectives.

Competencies

• Systems thinking across infrastructure, security, platforms, data, and integration workloads.
• Pragmatic decision-making to balance risk, resilience, cost, and delivery timelines.
• Stakeholder management and influence across operations, security, architecture, and delivery teams.
• Delivery assurance and governance mindset: standards, guardrails, and design reviews that enable speed with control.

Key Responsibilities

Hybrid and Multi-Cloud Infrastructure Architecture

• Design hybrid architectures combining on-premises data centres, private cloud platforms, and public cloud services (Azure, AWS, GCP).
• Support cloud-first, hybrid-by-design, and multi-cloud strategies.
• Ensure secure and performant connectivity between on-premises and cloud environments.
• Enable gradual modernisation and legacy transformation through hybrid patterns.

Hyperscaler-Native Integration and Connectivity

• Design and govern hybrid integration using native hyperscaler tooling to ensure low-latency, resilient, and secure connectivity for hybrid workloads.
• Microsoft Azure: ExpressRoute, VPN Gateway, Virtual WAN, Firewall, Load Balancer, and Azure Arc for hybrid and multi-cloud management.
• AWS: Direct Connect, site-to-site VPN, Transit Gateway, and AWS Outposts for on-premises workloads.
• GCP: Cloud Interconnect, Cloud VPN, Network Connectivity Center, and Anthos for hybrid and multi-cloud management.

Cloud Landing Zones and Platform Foundations

• Design and implement landing zones across cloud providers, covering identity and access integration with on-premises identity and access management (IAM), network segmentation and security zoning, and account/environment structures.
• Standardise environments (DEV/TEST/UAT/PROD) across hybrid landscapes to ensure platforms are consistent, repeatable, and auditable.

Security-by-Design and Defendable Infrastructure

• Embed security-by-design principles across hybrid architectures, including network isolation, segmentation, encryption, and secure routing.
• Align infrastructure design with Zero Trust and enterprise security architecture, reducing attack surface across on-premises and cloud boundaries.
• Ensure hybrid designs are defendable against cyber and operational threats.

Resilience, Availability and Disaster Recovery

• Design architectures for high availability and fault tolerance across hybrid setups, including regional and zonal resilience.

Cost Optimisation and Operational Excellence

• Design hybrid platforms with cost efficiency and transparency in mind and apply financial operations (FinOps) principles across cloud and hybrid environments.
• Support sizing, scaling, and workload placement decisions to balance performance, resilience, and cost.
• Ensure platforms are observable, operable, and supportable.

Governance, Assurance and Consulting Advisory

• Define infrastructure architecture standards, patterns, and guardrails; review and approve hybrid and cloud designs across programs.
• Support audits, compliance, and regulatory requirements and provide architectural assurance throughout the delivery lifecycle.
• Act as a trusted cloud and infrastructure advisor to client stakeholders and mentor engineers and junior architects.

Qualifications and Certifications

• TOGAF® Certified (mandatory) or equivalent architecture certification.
• Hyperscaler certifications (strongly preferred): Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert; AWS Solutions Architect (Associate or Professional); Google Professional Cloud Architect.
• FinOps or cloud cost management certifications (desirable).