Principal AWS Cloud Architect

Megazone Cloud US • Frisco, TX

1d • $170,000 - $195,000

About The Position

The Principal AWS Cloud Architect is a lead-level technical role on our cloud engagements. You'll own the technical direction of a workstream or engagement end to end, working with the customer's technical teams to set strategy and drive it to a documented, agreed target state. This is a leadership role that stays hands-on. You'll lead and mentor a blended onshore/offshore delivery team. When the project calls for it, you'll roll up your sleeves and build: designing landing zones, running migration waves, and writing and reviewing IaC yourself. You're equally comfortable leading a team of engineers or working independently as the sole architect on a project.

Requirements

• 15+ years designing and operating infrastructure, including 5+ years in a lead or principal architect role on customer-facing engagements.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, or similar.
• Demonstrated hands-on AWS depth. You have personally built production systems, not only managed teams that built them, and can still do so today.
• Proven ability to work independently as the sole architect on a project, from design through delivery.
• Experience leading and mentoring offshore or distributed engineering teams, including delegating work, reviewing quality, and coordinating across time zones.
• Experience setting technical strategy for an engagement and coordinating with customer technical leadership.
• Hands-on experience building AWS foundational environments: Control Tower, Landing Zone Accelerator, AWS Organizations, and multi-account architecture.
• Demonstrated experience with large-scale, multi-wave cloud migrations.
• Practical experience executing rehost and replatform migrations, and the judgment to recommend the right approach per workload.
• Hands-on experience with AWS Application Migration Service (MGN), AWS Migration Hub, and VM Import/Export.
• Strong AWS networking fundamentals: VPC design, routing, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect/VPN, and DNS.
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform and AWS CDK) and at least one scripting language (Python, Bash, or PowerShell).
• Current ability to review code and IaC, not just architecture diagrams.
• Excellent communication skills, with the ability to present to both customer executives and engineering teams.
• Active AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional certification required.

Nice To Haves

• An additional AWS Specialty certification (e.g., Security, Advanced Networking, or Machine Learning) is a plus.
• Experience with AWS Transform (including AWS Transform for VMware) is a significant plus.

Responsibilities

• Own the technical strategy for the engagement and drive it to a documented, agreed target state.
• Act as the primary technical point of contact for the customer's technical leadership on architecture, sequencing, and risk; drive discussions to decisions rather than leaving them open.
• Recommend best-fit approaches prescriptively and with conviction, backed by delivery experience. Say so clearly when the customer's preferred path is the wrong one.
• Make and document consequential architecture decisions, including trade-offs considered and those deliberately deferred.
• Set the engineering standard by example: review designs, code, and IaC personally.
• Work independently as the sole architect on smaller or early-phase engagements, owning design and build without a supporting team.
• Step in hands-on when the project needs it to: build foundational environments, execute migration waves, troubleshoot replication and cutover issues, write Terraform/CDK.
• Lead remediation personally when a workstream needs stabilization.
• Lead and coordinate offshore engineering teams across time zones: assign and sequence work, set clear acceptance criteria, and run effective handoffs so progress continues around the clock.
• Review offshore deliverables (designs, IaC, runbooks, migration plans) for quality and consistency before they reach the customer.
• Mentor consultants and engineers to raise their technical depth, delivery discipline, and customer-facing skill. Unblock them quickly and help them grow into more senior roles.
• Partner with the Engagement Manager and customer to build an achievable project plan with realistic milestones and dependencies.
• Confirm the team has the right skill mix and capacity; escalate gaps early.
• Coordinate technical execution alongside partner consultants and other vendor teams in an Agile delivery model.
• Contribute to the development and refinement of new delivery offerings, reusable assets, and best practices.
• Design and deploy AWS foundational environments using Control Tower and Landing Zone Accelerator (LZA).
• Define and implement multi-account strategy, covering: AWS Organizations and OU structure, account vending, SCPs, centralized logging and security tooling.
• Implement IAM and Identity Center, guardrails, and security baselines across the account structure.
• Lead discovery and assessment of on-premises estates: application dependency mapping, right-sizing analysis, and migration wave planning.
• Determine the right migration strategy per workload (rehost or replatform), balancing speed, risk, and long-term operating cost.
• Lead lift-and-shift replication of physical and VMware-based servers into EC2 using AWS Application Migration Service (MGN), including image conversion and OS/driver remediation.
• Direct replatforming onto managed AWS services: self-managed databases to RDS, load balancers to ALB/NLB, static content to CloudFront.
• Own hybrid connectivity design: Direct Connect, Site-to-Site VPN, Transit Gateway, DNS, and Active Directory integration.
• Oversee storage and database migrations (DMS, DataSync, Storage Gateway, Snow Family) and validate data integrity.
• Set standards for IaC (Terraform, AWS CDK), pipeline automation, and operational readiness before workloads reach production.
• Produce and review design documents, migration runbooks, diagrams, decision records, and hand-over guides.

Benefits

• Your growth is our growth.
• Management is here to empower you and clear roadblocks, not to micromanage.
• We won't ask you to do anything we're not willing to do ourselves.
• Your voice and designs will directly shape our technical roadmap and our clients' success.
• You'll work on the latest tech to solve real problems.
• We believe mistakes are learning opportunities, not failures.
• We seek diverse talent who are ready to make an immediate impact.
• We believe that innovation thrives when teams are built with a variety of backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior