Role: Cloud Architect Client: DC Government Location : Washington, DC (Onsite)
Job Description:
Responsibilities:
- Demonstrates expertise in conveying technical and functional concepts for cloud architecture, translating agency business requirements into clear solution designs, and presenting options, costs, and tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences.
- Identifies improvements to project standards to achieve high quality services and products, including Infrastructure as Code practices, change management, and documentation standards for all cloud work.
- Identifies best practices and standards for the use of Microsoft Azure, including the Azure Cloud Adoption Framework and Well-Architected Framework, landing zone design, naming and tagging, Azure Policy, and role-based access control (RBAC).
- Delivers support and design for cloud technologies that require integration with on-premises systems and networks, including hybrid connectivity to OCTO data centers, hub-and-spoke networking, private endpoints, firewall integration, and identity integration with Microsoft Entra ID.
- Interacts with executive level business users and technical experts, including agency CIOs, OCTO leadership, OCTO security, and vendor partners, to scope requirements, communicate status, and support decision-making.
- Functions as the cloud architecture SME for OCTO, providing authoritative guidance on Azure services, security baselines, cost management, and AWS operations.
- Leads large, complex cloud implementations, including assessment, design, and migration of on-premises virtualized workloads to Azure, from discovery and dependency mapping through target design, sizing, cost modeling, and migration waves.
- Designs, matures, and owns the Azure landing zone, including management groups, subscriptions, policy, RBAC, and security baselines using Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
- Ensures production changes are delivered through code and pull requests rather than manual portal changes.
- Provides architectural oversight of Azure Virtual Desktop environments, including the boundary between Terraform-managed infrastructure and the Nerdio management platform.
- Defines monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery standards for Azure workloads, and tracks and optimizes cloud spend to support agency chargeback reporting.
- Supports existing AWS workloads at an operational level.
- Provides technical direction, code review, and mentoring to the Azure Cloud Engineer, and ensures every critical system has a primary and backup owner.
- Maintains current architecture diagrams, design decisions, and runbooks. Documentation is a reviewed deliverable.
- Tracks work in Azure DevOps boards and incidents and changes in ServiceNow.
Minimum Qualifications:
- 8+ years in infrastructure engineering, with at least 5 years designing and building in Microsoft Azure.
- Demonstrated design and delivery of an enterprise Azure landing zone, including management groups, Azure Policy, RBAC, and hub-and-spoke networking.
- Hands-on Terraform experience in production, including reusable modules and remote state management.
- Experience building infrastructure CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps (or GitHub Actions with transferable skills).
- Strong knowledge of Microsoft Entra ID, conditional access, and identity governance.
- Experience planning or leading migrations of on-premises virtualized workloads (VMware or similar) to Azure.
- Working knowledge of AWS, sufficient to operate and troubleshoot existing workloads (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3).
- Experience leading or mentoring engineers, including code review.
- Strong written communication, with a track record of clear architecture documentation and runbooks.
Preferred Qualifications:
- Experience in state, local, or federal government IT environments.
- Hands-on experience with Azure Virtual Desktop and/or Nerdio Manager for Enterprise.
- Experience with Azure.
- Familiarity with compliance frameworks such as NIST 800-53, CJIS, or FedRAMP.
- Experience with Azure cost management, reservations, and chargeback models.
- Familiarity with ServiceNow for incident and change management.
Minimum Education/Certification Requirements:
Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305), or ability to obtain within 6 months of start.
Preferred: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate or higher; HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate.