Senior Cloud Architect

CGI•Lafayette, LA

6d•Hybrid

About The Position

CGI is seeking a Senior Cloud Architect to lead the design of cloud architecture and automation foundations for a large state-owned public power utility across Azure, AWS, and GCP. The work covers cloud operating model design, cloud strategy, cloud policies and standards, and validated documentation of current cloud processes and architecture. The role spans strategy, governance, and automation design. The architect leads automation design discussions and establishes standards and reference patterns, while the client’s engineers build and deploy automation and the client approves, publishes, and enforces governance materials. The position is on-site in Lafayette, Louisiana (preferred), Cary, North Carolina, or Hartford, Connecticut, in a hybrid working model. The architect owns the technical content of deliverables and serves as the primary counterpart to the client’s Enterprise Architecture, Cyber Security, and cloud team leaders. Responsibilities include defining a cloud operating model; developing and presenting a cloud strategy; establishing automation patterns for infrastructure as code, CI/CD, policy as code, account vending, and drift detection; authoring or reviewing cloud policies and standards; documenting current-state processes and architecture; and leading engagement and knowledge transfer with the client’s cloud team. This position requires at least 15 years of IT architecture experience, including at least five years designing and governing enterprise cloud environments on two or more of Azure, AWS, and GCP. A current professional-level Azure or AWS cloud architecture certification and a bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field are required. The estimated U.S. compensation range is $93,000 to $205,900. CGI benefits for eligible professionals include competitive compensation, comprehensive insurance options, matching contributions through the 401(k) plan and share purchase plan, paid vacation, holidays and sick time, paid parental leave, learning opportunities and tuition assistance, and wellness and well-being programs.

Requirements

At least 15 years of experience in IT architecture.
At least five years designing and governing enterprise cloud environments across two or more of Azure, AWS, and GCP.
Current professional-level cloud architecture certification on Azure or AWS: Microsoft Certified Azure Solutions Architect Expert or AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional.
Hands-on experience with infrastructure as code and policy as code, including Terraform, Bicep or CloudFormation, Azure Policy, AWS SCPs, or GCP Organization Policy, and with CI/CD pipelines; sufficient to lead automation design discussions and write automation standards.
Delivered at least two cloud operating model, Cloud Center of Excellence, or cloud governance engagements, including governance bodies, decision rights, and RACI design.
Authored cloud policies and standards for an enterprise or public-sector client, including identity and access, landing zones, tagging, guardrails, network segmentation, data protection, logging, and IaC, formatted for a formal IT governance process.
Working knowledge of Azure Policy and management groups, AWS Organizations, Control Tower and SCPs, and GCP Organization Policy and resource hierarchy.
Experience producing current-state architecture documentation covering landing zones, hybrid connectivity, identity, and application integration from configuration evidence, and aligning documentation to an architecture repository such as LeanIX.
Experience facilitating leadership interviews, principles workshops, process discovery sessions, and validation workshops with technical and business stakeholders.
Familiarity with NIST CSF and SP 800-53, CIS Benchmarks, and FinOps practices, and ability to map standards to those frameworks.
Bachelor’s degree in computer science or a related field.
Structured writing and facilitation skills, including producing documents in client templates and landing decisions in a decision log.

Nice To Haves

Electric utility, energy, or state public-sector experience, including awareness of NERC CIP applicability and state IT security policies.
Experience designing automated accounts or subscription vending and landing-zone pipelines at enterprise scale, including drift detection and remediation.
Experience building maintainer guides and running structured knowledge transfer, including reverse knowledge transfer.
Additional certifications such as Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, a second cloud architecture certification (AWS or Azure), CISSP or CCSP, TOGAF or equivalent, or FinOps Certified Practitioner.

Responsibilities

Analyze the client’s current cloud organization and draft operating model; lead options workshops and define governance bodies, decision rights, roles and RACI, service catalogue, engagement model, operating KPIs, and a transition roadmap within HR constraints.
Review existing strategy inputs and the client’s cloud-first standard; conduct leadership interviews and principles workshops; develop the cloud vision, guiding principles, strategic pillars and outcome KPIs, workload placement framework, architecture direction and reference patterns, adoption patterns, and phased roadmap; present the strategy for executive endorsement.
Lead automation working sessions with platform, security, and DevSecOps engineers; define the target automation model, including infrastructure-as-code provisioning, module structure and versioning, pipeline security gates, policy-as-code guardrails and enforcement modes, account and subscription vending, and drift and console-change detection.
Provide automation reference patterns and sample definitions, and review automation approaches on the client’s active projects.
Inventory existing policies, design the policy framework and hierarchy, and author or review up to 19 cloud policies, standards, and guidelines in the client’s IT Governance format.
Produce a crosswalk between guardrail controls and native cloud policy controls.
Scope the current-state process inventory and lead discovery sessions with process owners; document cloud provisioning and vending, decommissioning, architecture review, service activation, exceptions, change, incident, monitoring, backup and disaster recovery, vulnerability management, identity lifecycle, privileged access, secrets rotation, cost and tagging; and link improvements to assessment findings.
Use assessment evidence and the client’s LeanIX architecture repository to produce validated current-state architecture documentation for Azure, AWS, and GCP, covering resource hierarchy and landing zones, hybrid and inter-cloud networking, identity constructs, security and monitoring tools, and up to 20 priority applications and their integrations.
Define an architecture notation standard and conduct validation workshops.
Run weekly co-development sessions with the client’s cloud team, write maintainer guides for each workstream, deliver recorded knowledge-transfer sessions, and supervise reverse knowledge transfer.
Own the technical content of every deliverable and serve as the primary counterpart to the client’s Enterprise Architecture, Cyber Security, and cloud team leaders.
Keep work at the design and standards level; route requests to build or deploy automation in the client’s environments, application disposition, or workload migration through change control.
Produce documents using the client’s templates, with one review and one rework cycle, and maintain consistent policy voice and hierarchy.
Facilitate sessions with Enterprise Architecture, Cyber Security, Network, Finance, platform engineering, and application teams, and record decisions in a decision log.