Senior Cloud Architect

Robots and Pencils

13h•$110,000 - $151,000•Remote

About The Position

Robots & Pencils is hiring a Senior Cloud Application Architect to contribute to the design and delivery of cloud-native applications on AWS. The role combines hands-on development with growing architectural ownership, including designing services, APIs, and event flows that operate reliably in production. The architect will help decompose systems into well-bounded services, shape serverless and container-based deployments, and make decisions that support scalability, security, and maintainability. This is a delivery-embedded role on a cross-functional team building client systems. The architect will collaborate with senior architects, engineers, and product partners to translate requirements into application architecture, implement infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines, and integrate AI services where they add value. The role involves weighing tradeoffs across cost, performance, resilience, and team velocity while contributing to production-ready AI systems for enterprise workflows.

Requirements

At least 5 years of professional software engineering experience, including hands-on experience designing cloud-native applications.
Working knowledge of a cloud platform and cloud-native application patterns; AWS is preferred.
Proficiency in at least one backend language and familiarity with another, such as Python, TypeScript, Java, or Go.
Experience building microservices, serverless functions, and event-driven systems.
Familiarity with containers and orchestration.
Experience designing and consuming APIs across REST, GraphQL, or gRPC and working with API gateways.
Working knowledge of infrastructure as code and CI/CD.
Familiarity with observability, scalability, and resilience practices in cloud applications.
Understanding of cloud security, identity, and access management fundamentals.
Experience integrating AI or LLM services into applications, including RAG or inference patterns.
Demonstrable day-to-day use of AI-forward tools such as Claude and Cursor.
Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to navigate ambiguous technical challenges with sound judgment.

Nice To Haves

CMS integration specialization, including localized site builds and content migration, with hands-on exposure to SurfOS.

Responsibilities

Contribute to cloud-native application design, defining service boundaries, API contracts, and data flows on AWS.
Build and deploy microservices and serverless functions using containers and managed compute.
Implement event-driven patterns and asynchronous messaging between services.
Design and implement APIs across protocols and gateways.
Support infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines to make deployments repeatable and safe.
Implement observability, scalability, and resilience practices to keep applications healthy under load.
Apply AWS Well-Architected practices for security, reliability, and cost.
Build and integrate AI and LLM services into cloud applications, including RAG and inference workflows.
Use AI-forward tools such as Claude and Cursor in daily work.
Collaborate with engineering, data, AI, and product teams to translate requirements into application architecture.
Communicate technical tradeoffs and design decisions across functions.
Maintain architecture and API documentation that supports reproducibility, onboarding, and shared understanding.
Participate in design and code reviews, raising concerns and offering constructive feedback.
Take end-to-end ownership of system components while assuming increasing architectural responsibility.
Contribute to architectural standards and best practices.
Begin mentoring junior engineers and supporting their growth.