AWS Resident Architect - Senior Cloud Solutions Architect

Strategic Communications•Harrisburg, PA

12h•Onsite

About The Position

We are seeking a Senior AWS Solutions Architect to serve as a Resident Architect for enterprise and public sector customer engagements. The Resident Architect operates as a strategic cloud advisor rather than an implementation engineer, focusing on architectural governance, platform maturity, and adoption enablement rather than direct workload delivery. The Resident Architect provides ongoing architectural advisory, governance, and optimization guidance following cloud implementation projects. This role sustains AWS adoption momentum by ensuring architectures remain aligned with AWS best practices, operational maturity goals, and regulatory requirements. The Resident Architect works closely with customer engineering teams, AWS account teams, and Strategic’s Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) to support cloud platform maturity, modernization initiatives, and operational readiness. Unlike traditional staff augmentation roles, this position focuses on strategic advisory, architectural validation, and adoption enablement, helping organizations extend and operationalize AWS architectures implemented during major transformation programs.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or equivalent experience.
Required: AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
8+ years cloud architecture experience
5+ years designing and deploying AWS architectures
Experience supporting regulated or public-sector cloud environments (e.g., FedRAMP, CJIS, HIPAA, NIST frameworks, or GovCloud)
Proven experience in:
AWS networking architecture
Identity and access management
Multi-account governance
Infrastructure-as-code automation
Cloud security architecture
Experience supporting environments involving:
AWS Organizations
Landing Zone frameworks
DevSecOps pipelines
Hybrid architectures
Cloud migrations and modernization programs
Core AWS Services VPC networking architecture IAM and security architecture EC2 / EKS / ECS S3 / storage architectures RDS / Aurora / data platforms CloudWatch / observability AWS Config / Security Hub
Platform & DevOps Terraform / CloudFormation CI/CD platforms Container orchestration (EKS / Kubernetes) GitOps workflows
Security & Compliance Encryption architectures Network segmentation Logging and audit frameworks Regulatory cloud environments
Executive-level communication skills
Ability to influence architecture decisions
Customer advisory mindset
Strong technical documentation ability
Ability to translate business outcomes into architecture strategies
Background Check - must be US citizen and possess or be capable of obtaining a security clearance
Drug Testing

Nice To Haves

Preferred: AWS DevOps Engineer Professional AWS Security Specialty Kubernetes certifications (CKA / CKAD) FinOps Practitioner
Public Sector / SLED cloud programs
AWS Professional Services engagement support
FedRAMP / GovCloud environments
AI/ML and data platform architectures
Amazon Connect or digital service architectures
Large-scale migration programs

Responsibilities

Cloud Architecture Advisory Serve as the primary cloud architecture advisor for assigned customer environments.
Validate evolving architectures against the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
Identify architectural drift and recommend remediation strategies.
Develop and maintain current-state and target-state architecture diagrams.
Support architecture governance processes and design decision documentation.
Platform Engineering Enablement Provide guidance on:
Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)
CI/CD pipeline architectures
Containerization strategies (Kubernetes / ECS / EKS)
Landing zone design
Multi-account governance
Recommend automation strategies to improve operational efficiency and reliability.
Operational Readiness & Cloud Optimization Conduct Well-Architected Reviews and operational readiness assessments.
Support observability, monitoring, logging, and incident response improvements.
Assist teams in improving reliability, scalability, and performance of cloud workloads.
Identify cost optimization opportunities and FinOps alignment.
Cloud Migration & Modernization Advise on migration strategies including:
Rehost Replatform Refactor Replace Retire
Support phased modernization roadmaps aligned to business objectives.
Security & Compliance Advisory Provide architectural guidance aligned to:
FedRAMP CJIS HIPAA FERPA NIST frameworks
Support DevSecOps integration and IAM best practices.
Guide secure architecture patterns including encryption, network segmentation, and logging.
Customer Enablement & Knowledge Transfer Mentor internal engineering teams on AWS architecture best practices.
Conduct architecture workshops and technical briefings.
Support backlog prioritization for cloud improvements and adoption initiatives.
Stakeholder Coordination Coordinate with:
AWS account teams AWS TAMs Strategic delivery leadership Customer engineering leadership
Provide monthly and quarterly architecture reviews and reporting.