Cloud Architect | Top Secret clearance w/SCI eligibility

American Systems•Arlington, VA

About The Position

AMERICAN SYSTEMS, a 100% employee-owned government contractor, is seeking a Cloud Architect to join its Mission Engineering and Integration Team in Arlington, Virginia. This requisition is for potential upcoming work and is not a current opening; qualified candidates will be contacted when the work or funding becomes available. The Cloud Architect will design secure, scalable, and repeatable cloud and hybrid architectures supporting data ingestion, mission applications, partner access, enterprise services, and internal IPT integrations. The role works with Government mission stakeholders to align cloud landing zones, infrastructure, identity, monitoring, deployment, and operational support with mission priorities and security requirements. The architect will coordinate with multidisciplinary delivery teams, guide secure cloud configuration, assess proposed cloud changes, validate operational readiness, maintain architecture documentation, and promote reusable cloud patterns.

Requirements

Active Top Secret clearance with SCI and SAP eligibility.
Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, cloud computing, systems engineering, cybersecurity, or a related discipline, plus 10 or more years of related experience.
One major cloud architecture certification, such as AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, or Google Professional Cloud Architect.
CompTIA Security+ CE or an equivalent DoD baseline certification.
Experience designing secure and scalable cloud environments, including landing zones, compute, storage, identity integrations, observability, and deployment architectures.
Experience architecting secure cloud solutions using AWS, Azure, or equivalent platforms, including IAM, cloud networking, compute, storage, monitoring, logging, infrastructure as code, and security controls.
Demonstrated knowledge of APIs, message brokers, streaming, secure file transfer, container platforms, CI/CD alignment, and enterprise services.
Working knowledge of ABAC, identity federation, encryption, PKI, certificates, secrets management, logging, monitoring, and audit requirements.
Experience supporting control evidence, operational readiness reviews, change management, and sustainment handoff for cloud-hosted mission systems.
Experience documenting cloud architectures, application profiles, deployment manifests, operational runbooks, service dependencies, and integration decision records.
Ability to coordinate effectively with software, data, network, security, compliance, operations, mission, and Government stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA).
Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS).
HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate.
Experience designing and managing Government cloud landing zones or classified cloud regions using AWS GovCloud or Azure Government.
Mastery of Kubernetes, Terraform, and the design of automated cloud landing zones.
Practical experience implementing DevSecOps pipelines, policy as code, native cloud security services, and Zero Trust cloud architectures.

Responsibilities

Design cloud and hybrid architectures for data ingestion pipelines, mission application hosting, mission partner access, enterprise services integration, secure landing zones, and IPT platform requests.
Define platform requirements for compute, storage, networking, identity, APIs, service dependencies, runtime, scalability, availability, logging, monitoring, and deployment.
Support compliance routing by identifying landing-zone placement, hosting model, authorization boundary, control obligations, cross-domain dependencies, and operational constraints.
Develop architecture artifacts, including integration architectures, application profiles, platform design inputs, deployment approaches, observability baselines, test plans, readiness packages, and handoff materials.
Coordinate with cloud platform, enterprise services, network, security, compliance, software, data, and operations teams to align resources with approved patterns and mission needs.
Guide secure cloud configuration for identity federation, ABAC dependencies, certificates, keys, secrets handling, API management, message services, storage services, and monitoring dashboards.
Assess cloud changes for mission impact, security risk, service dependency, performance, cost, scalability, availability, test requirements, and rollback considerations.
Validate operational readiness for data movement, application deployment, access decisions, encryption, failover, logging, auditability, and sustainment support.
Maintain architecture records, including decision logs, cloud diagrams, deployment documentation, service dependency profiles, and production runbook inputs.
Promote reusable cloud patterns that reduce onboarding time, strengthen compliance evidence, improve reliability, and enable scalable enterprise platform adoption.