Lead Cloud Architect

C5MI Insight

20h•$166,800 - $182,400

About The Position

The Lead Cloud Architect owns the hosting, infrastructure, and platform architecture for a large-scale, greenfield SAP S/4HANA financial management modernization program for a Department of War organization. The role is accountable for a deployment posture that meets federal cloud security requirements and sustains continuous authorization throughout the program lifecycle. It leads the cloud and platform engineering team and designs the accredited hosting environment, enterprise-cloud connection and integration approach, environment landscape for concurrent process-area delivery, and resilience posture for degraded network conditions. The architect partners with security, risk management framework, and platform operations leadership to ensure solution components are authorizable, hardened, monitored, and recoverable. This position is contingent upon contract award. The role also presents and defends architecture decisions at program milestone reviews and government security and architecture working groups, and advises leadership on hosting costs, licensing, consumption models, and technical and schedule implications. Travel to client sites may be required up to 50%, depending on program schedules. The position includes people leadership responsibilities for performance management, employee development, engagement, workforce planning, policy compliance, risk management, and stakeholder communication. The role requires a related bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience, relevant cloud and infrastructure architecture experience, government-cloud experience, and people leadership experience. Candidates must meet applicable DoD baseline certification requirements before privileged access and hold or be able to obtain and maintain an active Secret clearance; U.S. citizenship is required for clearance eligibility. The posted annual salary range is $166,800–$182,400, with actual compensation depending on experience, qualifications, skills, and location.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent experience.
With a bachelor’s degree: 8–12 years of relevant experience and 3–5 years of people leadership experience; without a degree: 10–14 years of relevant experience and 5–8 years of people leadership experience.
8 or more years of cloud or enterprise infrastructure architecture experience, including 5 or more years focused on a major public cloud platform.
Demonstrated experience designing and delivering workloads in a government cloud environment, such as Azure Government, AWS GovCloud, or an equivalent accredited enclave.
Working knowledge of FedRAMP authorization, the DoD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide, and Impact Level 4 and 5 hosting requirements.
Experience supporting the risk management framework authorization process, including control implementation, artifact production, and continuous monitoring.
Demonstrated experience with infrastructure-as-code, automation, and CI/CD tooling in a controlled environment.
Experience designing high availability, backup, and disaster recovery architectures for mission-critical enterprise applications.
Experience leading an engineering team, including work allocation, quality review, and performance management.
Meet DoDM 8140.03 (formerly DoD 8570.01-M) IAT Level II baseline certification requirements, such as CompTIA Security+ CE, before being granted privileged access.
Obtain any computing environment certification required by the Government within six months of assignment.
Hold an active Secret clearance or be able to obtain and maintain one before assignment; U.S. citizenship is required.
Able to safely perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation.

Nice To Haves

Advanced certifications are valued.
Active Secret security clearance at time of hire.
Experience hosting or integrating SAP S/4HANA workloads in an accredited federal cloud, including SAP-certified infrastructure sizing and HANA platform operations.
Industry-recognized cloud architecture certification, such as Azure Solutions Architect Expert or AWS Solutions Architect Professional.
Experience implementing a zero trust reference architecture in a defense environment.
Experience with hardened container registries, Kubernetes orchestration, and DevSecOps pipeline accreditation.
Experience supporting federal ERP modernization programs, Department of War SAP environments, or other defense business systems acquired under DoDI 5000.75.
CISSP or equivalent advanced security certification.

Responsibilities

Own end-to-end cloud and infrastructure architecture, including the accredited hosting environment, network topology, connectivity and boundary approach, and integration with the customer’s enterprise cloud.
Lead and develop the cloud and platform engineering team; allocate work, manage delivery quality, and own team performance, staffing, and capability development.
Design development, test, staging, training, and production environments, including sizing, refresh strategy, and capacity planning for concurrent process-area delivery.
Ensure the hosting posture meets applicable federal cloud security requirements, including FedRAMP authorization levels and DoD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide impact levels.
Partner with risk management framework and security personnel to produce authorization artifacts, support control implementation and assessment, maintain the plan of action and milestones, and sustain the authority to operate through change.
Define and enforce infrastructure hardening standards, including security technical implementation guide compliance, baseline configuration management, vulnerability scanning, and patch management.
Design identity, credential, and access management integration, including federation, multifactor authentication, and privileged access management for platform administration.
Establish infrastructure-as-code, automation, and configuration management practices to make environments reproducible, auditable, and consistently configured.
Design resilience, backup, high availability, and disaster recovery architecture, including operation and synchronization under denied, degraded, intermittent, and limited-bandwidth conditions.
Define containerization, orchestration, and portability for extensibility and integration services while ensuring compliance with container hardening standards.
Own platform monitoring, logging, and observability architecture, including audit-log retention and protection sufficient for financial audit and inspector general examination.
Present and defend hosting and infrastructure architecture at program milestone gate reviews and government security and architecture working groups.
Advise program leadership on hosting cost drivers, licensing and consumption models, and the technical and schedule implications of hosting decisions.
Travel to client sites up to 50%, varying with client program schedules.
Participate in quality assurance activities and protect sensitive information in accordance with company policies and certified processes.
Perform other related tasks as assigned by the direct supervisor.
Set performance expectations; coach, give feedback and recognition, conduct goal-setting and evaluations, plan development, and address performance, conduct, and attendance issues.
Develop employees through coaching, mentoring, training, and stretch assignments; identify skill gaps and support succession planning and talent pipeline readiness.
Foster an inclusive, respectful, high-performing environment and reinforce accountability, collaboration, company values, and professional standards.
Plan, assign, and prioritize work; manage workloads and staffing within approved parameters; and escalate resource risks or constraints.
Apply company policies and employment practices consistently, partner with HR on employee relations, and identify and mitigate people, delivery, and compliance risks.
Communicate expectations, decisions, and changes clearly; align objectives with business priorities; and collaborate across matrixed, cross-functional, and client environments.
Adhere to C5MI policies and procedures, demonstrate its core values, maintain respectful conduct, report to work prepared and on time, meet productivity standards, and protect proprietary information.