158636 Cloud Architect, Location: Lansing, MI (Hybrid-1, 2 days a week), Duration: 6+ Months contract

Hi,

        Please find the role below and let us know your interest.

Role: 158636 Cloud Architect

Location: Lansing, MI (Hybrid-1, 2 days a week).

Experience: 10 Years

Duration: 6 Months Contract 

Interview Process: In-person interviews

Job description:

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 ArgoCD

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-AZ configuration

• Design VPC networking, security groups, IAM roles/policies, KMS keys, and

Secrets 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:

o EB pattern: source build → artifact → eb deploy to environment per stage

o EKS pattern: Docker build → ECR push → manifest/Helm chart update

→ GitOps sync via ArgoCD or Flux

o EC2 pattern: build → AMI bake or aws-deploy → blue/green or rolling

release

o In-place upgrade pattern: validation, packaging, and controlled

deployment to existing servers

• Implement GitOps using ArgoCD 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

• 5–6 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 Secrets 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 ArgoCD 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, secrets rotation, and migration

cutover

• Linux administration (RHEL/Amazon Linux/Ubuntu) and shell 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, secrets 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