What are the responsibilities and job description for the Senior Cloud Migration Architect position at Careers Integrated Resources Inc?
Immediate Opening
Title: Cloud Architect / Senior Cloud Migration Architect
Location: Lansing, MI 48933 United States (Hybrid - 2 days onsite per week)
Interview Process: In-person interviews
Hours / Schedule: 40 hrs. per wk. / 8AM-5PM
Job Type: Contract
Job Duration: 06 months (Possible extensions)
Client: Public Sector
Job Description:
Position Overview:
Key Responsibilities:
AWS Platform Configuration:
CI/CD & GitOps:
Observability & Reliability:
Documentation & Hand-off:
Collaboration:
Required Qualifications:
Preferred Qualifications:
Title: Cloud Architect / Senior Cloud Migration Architect
Location: Lansing, MI 48933 United States (Hybrid - 2 days onsite per week)
Interview Process: In-person interviews
Hours / Schedule: 40 hrs. per wk. / 8AM-5PM
Job Type: Contract
Job Duration: 06 months (Possible extensions)
Client: Public Sector
Job Description:
Position Overview:
- We are seeking a Senior Cloud Migration Architect to embed with our development team and lead the AWS platform configuration and CI/CD automation for a large-scale enterprise cloud migration program. The program covers 30 applications across migration approaches such as Elastic Beanstalk, Amazon EKS, EC2/Cloud VM - to be delivered across multiple sprints.
- The contractor will own the technical configuration of AWS services for each migration pattern, design and build Azure DevOps (ADO) pipelines that integrate with ArgClient or Flux for GitOps-driven deployments to EKS, and partner closely with application teams, the AWS Infrastructure Team, and the DBA team to deliver production-ready environments sprint by sprint.
- This is a hands-on, deeply technical role for someone who can move fast, write production-grade IaC, debug across the stack, and mentor application developers and administrators on cloud-native patterns.
Key Responsibilities:
AWS Platform Configuration:
- Configure and tune AWS Elastic Beanstalk environments for applications across Dev, Test, and Prod, including platform versions, scaling policies, environment variables, and rolling deployment configuration
- Stand up and operate Amazon EKS clusters across Dev/Test/Prod for containerized workloads, including node groups, cluster autoscaling, ingress controllers, and namespace strategy
- Provision and harden EC2/Cloud VM environments, including AMI selection, instance sizing, OS-level configuration, and patching strategy
- Partner with the DBA team on Amazon RDS setup for SQL Server and PostgreSQL including parameter groups, subnet groups, backup policies, and multi-Client configuration
- Design VPC networking, security groups, IAM roles/policies, KMS keys, and Products Manager integration following least-privilege principles
- Build infrastructure-as-code (Terraform preferred; CloudFormation acceptable) so every environment is reproducible and auditable
CI/CD & GitOps:
- Design and build Azure DevOps build and release pipelines tailored to each migration pattern:
- EB pattern: source build artifact eb deploy to environment per stage
- EKS pattern: Docker build ECR push manifest/Helm chart update GitOps sync via ArgClient or Flux
- EC2 pattern: build AMI bake or aws-deploy blue/green or rolling release
- In-place upgrade pattern: validation, packaging, and controlled deployment to existing servers
- Implement GitOps using ArgClient or Flux for EKS workloads - pull-based deployments, automated drift detection, app-of-apps or kustomize/helm patterns, multi-cluster or multi-namespace promotion
- Establish promotion strategy across Dev to Test to Prod with appropriate gates, approvals, and rollback mechanisms
- Standardize pipeline templates (YAML) so application teams can self-onboard new services consistently
- Integrate static analysis, container scanning (Trivy/ECR scan), SAST/DAST hooks, and artifact provenance into the pipeline
Observability & Reliability:
- Configure CloudWatch logs, metrics, alarms, and dashboards for each workload
- Define SLOs, alerting thresholds, and incident response runbooks for production cutover events
Documentation & Hand-off:
- Produce architecture decision records (ADRs), runbooks, and operational procedures so workloads can be supported by the long-term operations team
- Maintain a clean, versioned IaC repository as the source of truth for all environments
Collaboration:
- Work daily with application development teams, AWS Infrastructure Team, DBA Team, and Tech Leads
- Pair with developers to debug cloud-specific issues (cold starts, container OOMs, RDS connectivity, IAM denials)
Required Qualifications:
- 56 years hands-on experience building and operating production workloads on AWS, with deep knowledge of Elastic Beanstalk, EKS, EC2, RDS, VPC, IAM, S3, CloudWatch, and Products Manager
- 3 years hands-on with Kubernetes - production EKS preferred, including Helm, kubectl, ingress (ALB/NGINX), HPA, and troubleshooting pods/services/networking
- Production experience with ArgClient or Flux - designed app-of-apps structure, managed multi-environment promotion, and resolved GitOps drift in real workloads. This is non-negotiable.
- Strong Azure DevOps Pipelines (YAML) experience - build pipelines, multi-stage release pipelines, variable groups, service connections, and self-hosted/Microsoft-hosted agents. Equivalent strong experience in another major CI/CD tool (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) is acceptable if Azure DevOps can be picked up quickly
- Solid Docker skills - multi-stage builds, image hardening, ECR
- Infrastructure-as-Code in production: Terraform (preferred) or CloudFormation/CDK
- Database familiarity - comfortable working with DBA teams on RDS (SQL Server and PostgreSQL), connection strings, Products rotation, and migration cutover
- Linux administration (RHEL/Amazon Linux/Ubuntu) and Client scripting (bash)
- Source control with Git - branching strategies, pull requests, code review discipline
- Strong written communication - must produce clear runbooks, architecture diagrams, and PR descriptions
Preferred Qualifications:
- AWS certifications: AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional or DevOps Engineer - Professional
- CKA / CKAD (Certified Kubernetes Administrator/Developer)
- Experience migrating .NET and Java applications from on-premises to AWS
- Experience operating COTS products in containerized or cloud environments
- Experience with service mesh (Istio, App Mesh) or API gateways
- Exposure to HashiCorp Vault, Products rotation, and certificate management
- Familiarity with DataDog, New Relic, or Splunk in addition to native AWS observability
- Experience with blue/green and canary deployment patterns