Senior Cloud Architect - Capital Markets

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation • Charlotte, NC

4d • Hybrid

About The Position

We are seeking a visionary and hands-on Senior Cloud Architect to lead the transformation of our Middle-Office and Back-Office (BOMO) ecosystems. In this role, you will own the architectural roadmap, design, and cloud infrastructure for our next-generation rates and FX & Derivates trading systems. You will replace legacy batch processing with a modern, high-throughput, event-driven streaming architecture utilizing AWS Fargate, Amazon EKS (Kubernetes) and Amazon MSK (Apache Kafka). Your mission is to build a highly resilient, scalable data pipeline that seamlessly feeds our Databricks analytics platform while ensuring zero disruption to critical upstream front-office desks and downstream financial systems.

Requirements

• 10+ years in IT architecture, with at least 4+ years as a Cloud Architect within Capital Markets, Investment Banking, or Fintech domains.
• Production experience architecting, scaling, and managing cloud-native applications on Kubernetes (Amazon EKS) and AWS Fargate / ECS.
• Strong technical background in Java (for enterprise backend frameworks and high-performance Kafka streams) and Python (for data engineering, pipelining, and rapid service deployment). Must be capable of performing deep-dive code reviews.
• Deep, production-hardened experience writing modular, scalable Terraform configurations to maintain immutable AWS environments.
• Deep, hands-on production expertise with Apache Kafka (or Amazon MSK), including performance tuning, topic partition strategies, and consumer lag mitigation.
• Mastery of distributed systems concepts, including event sourcing, CQRS, dead-letter queuing, and idempotency patterns.
• Exceptional stakeholder management skills; ability to articulate complex distributed systems architecture to both C-level executives and engineering teams.

Nice To Haves

• Knowledge of container lifecycle management, service meshes, and autoscaling paradigms (e.g., KEDA based on Kafka lag) is highly desired.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional
• HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
• Databricks Certified Solutions Architect or Confluent Certified Administrator/Developer

Responsibilities

• Define Target-State BOMO Architecture: Shape middle- and back-office platform visions to directly support business revenue growth and multi-fold transaction scaling.
• Design Event-Driven Integration (OBS 2.0): Architect high-throughput publisher/subscriber patterns using Amazon MSK (Kafka), Amazon EKS, and AWS Fargate.
• Protect Workflow Integrity: Guarantee that BOMO system changes maintain strict backward compatibility, preventing any upstream or downstream system disruptions.
• Establish Architectural Governance: Create reusable design standards and reference blueprints aligned with broader Enterprise Architecture guardrails.
• Own Cloud Infrastructure & Security: Drive 100% automated infrastructure provisioning via Terraform while enforcing a Zero-Trust security and IAM posture.
• Ensure High Availability & Performance: Guarantee peak platform reliability and sub-millisecond scalability using active CloudWatch observability and self-healing systems.

Benefits

• Hybrid workforce model that provides employees with an opportunity to work from home, as well as, from an SMBC office.
• Reasonable accommodations during candidacy for applicants with disabilities consistent with applicable federal, state, and local law.

What This Job Offers

• Job Type: Full-time
• Career Level: Senior
• Education Level: No Education Listed