Senior Cloud Architect

NorthMark Strategies • Dallas, TX

2d

About The Position

NorthMark Strategies is seeking a Senior Cloud Architect to own the technical direction of its public cloud platforms and serve as the senior technical authority across AWS and Azure. Reporting to the Director of Cloud Platform, this senior individual-contributor role sets architecture standards, designs governance controls, and guides engineering teams in building production-grade platforms. The role covers the full architecture lifecycle, from discovery and design through implementation guidance, platform operationalization, documentation, and enablement.

The architect will work across managed Kubernetes, cloud networking, security, and data platform architecture. They will also shape how AI tooling is embedded in engineering delivery as a quality gate. The position sets platform direction and technical standards while engineering teams deliver against them. The Director of Cloud Platform owns team management, operating model, budget, and program delivery; the Senior Cloud Architect makes technical decisions. Hands-on credibility is important, including direct work with infrastructure as code and intervention on critical issues when needed.

Requirements

• Career progression from hands-on infrastructure or cloud engineering into principal-level cloud architecture.
• Production depth across AWS and Azure, including landing zones, multi-account or subscription governance, managed services, and security architecture.
• Experience with managed Kubernetes at scale, including AKS or EKS, cluster lifecycle management, and workload scheduling.
• Cloud networking experience with hub-and-spoke topologies, peering, private DNS, private endpoints, and hybrid connectivity.
• Fluency with Terraform in complex, multi-account environments.
• A track record of designing and enforcing cloud governance, including guardrails, policy-as-code, and compliance controls.
• Ability to influence engineering teams and senior stakeholders without direct authority.
• Ability to communicate architecture decisions and trade-offs clearly in writing and presentations.
• One or more expected certifications: Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert; AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate or Professional.
• Must be legally authorized to work in the United States without employer sponsorship now or at any time in the future.

Nice To Haves

• Cloud HPC for scientific or engineering workloads, including job schedulers and high-speed interconnects such as InfiniBand.
• Production-scale cloud data platform delivery, such as medallion architecture or AWS data services.
• AI inference gateway or model-serving infrastructure experience.
• Agentic AI workflows applied to infrastructure engineering.
• GPU infrastructure or cloud ML platforms.
• Experience in regulated or high-availability environments, such as financial services, motorsport, or government.
• A degree in Engineering, Computer Science, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
• CCNA or an equivalent network engineering foundation.

Responsibilities

• Define cloud architecture standards, reference architectures, and design principles across AWS and Azure.
• Design and enforce technical guardrails across multi-account AWS and multi-subscription Azure environments using policy-as-code and compliance controls.
• Translate frameworks such as CAF and Well-Architected into concrete technical controls and patterns.
• Design tagging and cost-attribution architecture to support FinOps reporting.
• Present architecture direction, trade-offs, and technical risk to senior leadership alongside the Director of Cloud Platform.
• Architect multi-cloud landing zones and hub-and-spoke network topologies across AWS and Azure.
• Design managed Kubernetes platforms at scale, including cluster lifecycle, multi-tenancy, and workload scheduling.
• Lead cloud network architecture, including inter-region and cross-cloud routing, private DNS, private endpoints, and connectivity to corporate networks.
• Integrate batch and workflow orchestration on Kubernetes with cloud-native service networking and modern workload identity patterns.
• Design cloud data platforms using layered architectures across ingestion, transformation, and consumption.
• Enable distributed querying across curated data sources and define data access control, governance, and observability patterns.
• Architect AI inference gateway infrastructure for centralized model routing, security controls, cost attribution, and observability.
• Design self-hosted, open-weight model inference on cloud GPU capacity for workloads involving sensitive data.
• Design agentic AI workflows for engineering that act as quality gates in the delivery pipeline.
• Serve as the technical escalation point for difficult platform problems.
• Mentor engineers through design reviews, pairing, and architecture guidance; run workshops on architecture patterns, tools, and practical AI workflows.
• Contribute to technical interviews and help set the technical bar for platform roles.
• Own Terraform infrastructure-as-code standards, bring existing cloud resources under version-controlled IaC, and enforce repeatable deployment patterns.
• Define DevSecOps pipeline patterns and identity and security architecture.
• Produce high-level and low-level architecture documentation and runbooks that enable others to operate and extend the platforms.

Benefits

• Company-paid lunch stipend, with lunch provided through GrubHub.
• 100% employer-paid medical coverage in the High Deductible Health Plan, plus dental and vision benefits for employees and their families.
• 16 weeks of paid parental leave.
• Employee Assistance Program.
• Life insurance.
• Short-term and long-term disability coverage.
• 401(k) match of 100% of employee contributions up to 6%.
• Optional employee-paid PPO medical insurance and other benefits, including Health Savings Accounts with a company contribution, Flexible Spending Accounts, supplemental life insurance, and Wellhub.
• 25 days of paid time off plus 12 company holidays.

What This Job Offers

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