What are the responsibilities and job description for the Cloud SME/ Lead position at Fourways Consulting Services?
Role: Cloud SME/ Lead
Location: Dallas, TX (Onsite – In Person Interview is Mandatory)
Duration: 6 Months
- The Cloud SME is the go‑to expert for AWS and Azure cloud platforms.
- This role designs, reviews, and supports cloud solutions to make sure they are secure, reliable, cost‑effective, and compliant.
- The SME guides teams, supports projects, resolves complex issues, and advises leadership and customers on cloud best practices.
Key Responsibilities
1. Cloud Architecture & Design
- Design and review AWS and Azure cloud architectures (IaaS, PaaS, limited SaaS).
- Ensure solutions follow best practices for security, scalability, high availability, and DR.
- Support hybrid and multi‑cloud environments.
- Define standard architectures, templates, and guardrails.
2. Cloud Operations & Support
- Act as Level‑3 / SME escalation for AWS and Azure issues.
- Troubleshoot complex issues related to:
- Compute (EC2, Azure VMs)
- Storage (S3, EBS, Azure Blob, Disk)
- Networking (VPC, VNets, VPN, Load Balancers)
- Identity & Access (IAM, Azure AD)
- Support 24x7 operations model (on‑call or advisory).
3. Security & Compliance
- Enforce least‑privilege access, IAM best practices, and RBAC.
- Implement and review:
- Network security (NSG, Security Groups, NACLs)
- Encryption, Key Management (KMS, Key Vault)
- Logging and monitoring (CloudTrail, Azure Monitor)
- Support compliance, audits, and security reviews.
4. Automation & Infrastructure as Code
- Drive automation using:
- Terraform / CloudFormation / ARM / Bicep
- Standardize repeatable builds and reduce manual work.
- Integrate cloud automation with CI/CD pipelines.
5. Cost Management & Optimization
- Monitor cloud spend and optimize costs using:
- Budgets, alerts, tagging, and chargeback/showback models
- Identify unused or oversized resources and recommend savings.
6. Cloud Migration & Modernization
- Support cloud migration strategies:
- Lift‑and‑shift
- Re‑platform
- Refactor
- Advise on application modernization, containers, and cloud‑native services.
7. Stakeholder & Team Enablement
- Act as technical advisor for:
- Project Managers
- Delivery teams
- Customers
- Review designs, provide approvals, and mentor engineers.
- Create documentation, SOPs, and runbooks.
Required Skills & Experience
Technical Skills
- AWS Services: EC2, S3, IAM, VPC, RDS, CloudWatch, Route53, Lambda (basic)
- Azure Services: Azure VMs, VNets, Azure AD, Storage, Azure Monitor, Key Vault
- Strong understanding of:
- Networking
- Security
- Backup & DR
- Monitoring & logging
- Hands‑on experience with Terraform or equivalent IaC tools
Expected rating level:
Category | Skill Area | Expected Level (0-4) |
Core Cloud | AWS core services | 3-4 |
Core Cloud | Azure and Google Cloud Platform core services | 2-3 |
Core Cloud | Cloud architecture & design understanding | 2-3 |
Core Cloud | Terraform - Infrastructure as Code | 2-3 |
Core Cloud | Cloud networking (VPC/VNET, routing, firewalls) | 3-4 |
Core Cloud | IAM & access management | 3-4 |
Security & Ops | Cloud security & hardening | 3 |
Security & Ops | DR & HA design | 3 |
Security & Ops | Monitoring & logging | 2-3 |
Automation | Automation mindset | 3-4 |
Automation | Scripting (Python/Bash/PowerShell) | 2-3 |
Automation | Cost optimization / FinOps | 2-3 |
Value Add | Multi-cloud exposure | 3 |
Value Add | ITIL Process Maturity, Monitoring, Optimization | 2-3 |
Value Add | Certifications (AWS/Azure/Terraform) | 2-3 |
Leadership | Technical leadership / Collaboration | 2-3 |
Leadership | Ownership & accountability | 3-4 |