Job Description:The IT Enterprise System & Cloud Architect is accountable for defining, governing, and evolving the organization's enterprise infrastructure, hybrid cloud, and platform architecture in support of mission-critical, safety-sensitive, and highly regulated operations. The role ensures that enterprise systems, technical infrastructure, and cloud platforms are designed and operated in a secure, resilient, scalable, and standardized manner aligned with business strategy, compliance obligations, and operational excellence.
Acting as a senior technical authority, the Architect translates business and operational requirements into pragmatic, supportable architectural designs and implementation plans across on-premises, hybrid, and cloud environments. The role places strong emphasis on availability, recoverability, cybersecurity, cost governance, and lifecycle management-balancing innovation with operational stability and regulatory compliance.
PRINCIPAL RESPONSIBILITIES:Enterprise & Cloud Architecture Leadership- Define and maintain enterprise and cloud target architectures, reference designs, and multi-year roadmaps spanning data centers/bases, hybrid connectivity, public cloud (Azure/AWS), and SaaS platforms.
- Act as Design Authority for enterprise infrastructure and cloud solutions, ensuring alignment with architectural standards, security principles, operational models, and regulatory expectations.
- Lead architecture reviews for major initiatives, platform changes, mergers/integrations, and vendor solutions.
Mission-Critical & Operational Resilience Design- Architect highly available, fault-tolerant platforms supporting 24x7 operational environments, including disaster recovery, business continuity, and failover strategies.
- Ensure designs meet stringent uptime, performance, and recoverability requirements common in aviation, industrial, and energy operations.
- Partner with Operations & Service Delivery teams to ensure architectures and infrastructure are supportable, monitorable, and production-ready.
Cloud, Hybrid & FinOps Governance- Architect and govern Azure, AWS, and hybrid environments including landing zones, networking, identity, compute, storage, and security baselines.
- Establish architectural patterns for scalability, cost transparency, and financial governance in line with FinOps best practices.
- Provide authoritative guidance on cloud adoption, migrations, workload placement, and decommissioning of legacy platforms.
Identity, Security & Compliance Architecture- Define secure-by-design architectures aligned to Zero Trust principles across identity, endpoint, network, and data layers.
- Ensure infrastructure and cloud designs meet internal security standards and external compliance obligations (e.g. ISO 27001, SOX, NIS, NIST CSF, aviation and industrial regulatory requirements and frameworks).
- Collaborate with Cybersecurity and Risk teams to embed controls, logging, monitoring, and auditability into platform designs.
Standards, Governance & Vendor Engagement- Define, maintain, and enforce enterprise infrastructure, collaboration systems, and cloud standards, guardrails, and lifecycle practices.
- Participate in architecture governance forums, technical design authorities, and change advisory processes.
- Evaluate vendors, manage service providers, and technology platforms, providing independent technical recommendations and risk assessments.
Delivery Enablement & Operational Transition- Provide hands-on architectural leadership during project delivery-from concept and design through implementation and operational handover.
- Ensure designs are well documented, automated where appropriate, and transitioned cleanly into steady-state operations.
- Support root cause analysis and remediation of complex cross-platform technical issues.
Strategy, Innovation & Continuous Improvement- Monitor industry trends and emerging technologies relevant to regulated, mission-critical environments.
- Identify opportunities for modernization, automation, consolidation, and operational efficiency improvements.
- Contribute to technology strategy, investment planning, and decision support.
PERSON SPECIFICATION: (minimum education requirements, key skills and experience)
Qualifications:- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or equivalent professional experience.
- Architecture, Cloud, Infrastructure, or Security certifications preferred (e.g. Azure Architect, TOGAF, ITIL, Microsoft, AWS, CISSP)
Experience:- 10+ years of progressive experience in enterprise infrastructure, systems, and/or cloud environments.
- Demonstrated experience designing and governing complex hybrid and cloud architectures.
- Strong background across compute, networking, identity, storage, endpoint management, collaboration systems, and systems integration.
- Experience working with geographically distributed operations, OT-adjacent systems, or safety-critical environments is highly desirable
Skills:
- Strong enterprise and cloud architecture design capability with a systems-thinking approach.
- Deep technical knowledge of Microsoft enterprise platforms, collaboration systems, hybrid identity, and cloud services.
- Ability to translate complex business and operational requirements into practical, sustainable architecture and implementation plans.
- Excellent stakeholder engagement skills, with the ability to communicate effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.
- Excellent documentation, analytical, and problem-solving skills.
- Comfortable operating as a senior technical authority without direct line management.
