What are the responsibilities and job description for the AWS Lead Cloud Architect position at [cognition]?
Company Description:
Cognition is a leading provider of connected advertising solutions, empowering businesses to reach their target audiences with precision and drive measurable results. Our innovative platform seamlessly blends advanced technology with data-driven insights, enabling advertisers to optimize their advertising campaigns across various channels effectively.
Location:
We are ideally seeking local candidates in Jacksonville, but for the right candidate, we would be willing to bring someone no who is based elsewhere.
What We're Looking For:
We are seeking a highly experienced and visionary Lead Cloud Architect with a proven track record of 5-10 years in designing, implementing, and managing robust cloud solutions across both Amazon Web Services (AWS). In this critical role, you will be responsible for defining our cloud architecture strategy, ensuring operational excellence, security, and cost optimization for our evolving infrastructure. You will be a key leader, guiding our engineering teams and shaping the future of our cloud environment.
Key Responsibilities:
Strategic Cloud Architecture:
- Lead the design and evolution of highly available, scalable, secure, and cost-effective cloud architectures on AWS.
- Develop and maintain cloud architectural blueprints, standards, and best practices.
- Translate business requirements into technical cloud solutions, considering long-term scalability and maintainability.
Implementation & Deployment:
- Oversee and actively participate in the implementation of complex cloud infrastructure and applications using Infrastructure as Code (e.g., Terraform, CloudFormation).
- Automate deployment, scaling, and management of cloud resources.
- Ensure seamless integration of cloud services with on-premise systems where applicable.
Auditing & Optimization:
- Conduct regular audits of existing cloud environments to identify areas for improvement in performance, security, cost efficiency, and compliance.
- Implement strategies for continuous cost optimization across both AWS, including reserved instances, spot instances, and rightsizing.
- Monitor cloud resource utilization and health, establishing proactive alerts and remediation strategies.
Security & Compliance:
- Design and enforce robust security controls and best practices within the cloud infrastructure (e.g., IAM, network security, data encryption, security groups/firewalls).
- Ensure compliance with industry standards and regulatory requirements (e.g., SOC2, ISO 27001, GDPR).
- Implement and manage disaster recovery and business continuity plans for cloud services.
- Mentorship & Leadership:
- Act as a subject matter expert and provide technical leadership and mentorship to development and operations teams.
- Foster a culture of cloud best practices, documentation, innovation, and continuous learning.
- Collaborate with cross-functional teams to drive architectural consistency and efficiency.
- Vendor Management:
- Stay abreast of new AWS services and features, evaluating their potential applicability to our environment.
- Engage with cloud service providers and third-party vendors as needed.
Required Qualifications:
- 5-10 years of progressive experience in Cloud Architecture, with at least 3-5 years focused specifically on AWS.
- 1-3 years of Google Cloud Platform experience is a plus.
- Deep hands-on experience with core AWS services (EC2, S3, RDS, VPC, Lambda, SQS, SES, ECS/EKS, API Gateway, CloudFront, CloudWatch, CodeDeploy, Glue, IAM, SQS, SNS, DynamoDB, Athena and more).
Preferred by not required:
- Hands-on experience with core GCP services (Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, Cloud SQL, VPC, GKE, Cloud Functions, Pub/Sub, Cloud Monitoring, IAM, BigQuery, Dataflow).
- Expert proficiency with Terraform is essential. Experience with CloudFormation (and GCP Deployment Manager) is a strong plus.
- Strong scripting skills (e.g., Python, Bash, Go) for automation and operational tasks.
- In-depth understanding of cloud networking concepts (VPC, subnets, routing, load balancers, VPN, interconnects, DNS).
- Solid understanding of cloud security principles, best practices, and tools (WAFs, IDS/IPS, security groups, IAM policies).
- Extensive experience with Docker and Kubernetes (EKS/GKE).
- Experience with CI/CD pipelines and tools (e.g., Jenkins, GitLab CI, AWS CodePipeline/CodeBuild, Google Cloud Build).
- Experience with both relational (e.g. MySQL, Postgres) and NoSQL databases (e.g., Mongo DB/Atlas) in a cloud context.
- Experience with cloud-native monitoring and logging tools (CloudWatch, Stackdriver/Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging) and third-party solutions (e.g., Splunk).
- Exceptional analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills, with the ability to articulate complex technical concepts to both technical and non-technical audiences. Good documentation is a must!
Having these would be a plus:
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect (Professional) and Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect. Additional certifications (e.g., Security, DevOps) are a plus.
- Experience with big data technologies and services on AWS (e.g., Glue, Kinesis, Mongo Atlas).
- Advanced experience with serverless architectures on AWS Lambda.
- Experience designing and implementing microservices architectures.
- Practical experience with FinOps practices and tooling for cloud cost management.
- Strong advocate for DevOps principles and practices.
What We Offer:
- Competitive salary and benefits package.
- Opportunity to work with cutting-edge technologies and make a significant impact.
- A collaborative and supportive work environment.
- Professional development and growth opportunities.