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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for AWS Architect

💰 $120,000 - $200,000

CloudArchitectureAWSDevOps

🎯 Role Definition

The AWS Architect is a senior technical leader responsible for designing, implementing, and governing cloud-native solutions on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This role blends deep AWS technical expertise with business acumen to deliver secure, scalable, resilient, and cost-optimized cloud architectures that meet compliance requirements and accelerate product delivery. The AWS Architect partners with engineering, security, operations, and business stakeholders to create architectural roadmaps, drive migration and modernization initiatives, and institutionalize best practices for infrastructure as code (IaC), automation, observability, and operational excellence.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Senior Cloud Engineer or Cloud Systems Engineer with multi-service AWS experience
  • Solutions Architect or Pre-Sales Cloud Architect focused on enterprise accounts
  • DevOps Engineer / Platform Engineer with infrastructure, automation, and IaC expertise

Advancement To:

  • Principal Cloud Architect / Lead Cloud Architect
  • Head of Cloud / Director of Cloud Infrastructure
  • Chief Technology Officer (CTO) or VP, Engineering (for product-centric pathways)

Lateral Moves:

  • Security Architect (Cloud Security / IAM / Compliance focus)
  • Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) Lead or Platform Engineering Manager

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Design and document end-to-end AWS architectures for new and existing applications, incorporating multi-account AWS Organizations, VPC design, subnets, route tables, NAT gateways, Transit Gateway, and hybrid connectivity (VPN/Direct Connect), ensuring high availability and fault tolerance across multiple Availability Zones and Regions.
  • Lead cloud migration planning and execution for lift-and-shift, re-platform, and re-architecture initiatives by assessing on-premises workloads, creating migration strategies, prioritizing applications, and coordinating AWS Server Migration Service, Database Migration Service (DMS), Application Discovery Service, and third-party migration tools.
  • Define and implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) standards and templates using AWS CloudFormation, Terraform, or AWS CDK to ensure repeatable, version-controlled, and testable infrastructure deployments across development, staging, and production environments.
  • Architect and implement secure identity, access, and authorization models leveraging AWS IAM, AWS Organizations SCPs, IAM roles and policies, AWS Single Sign-On (SSO), and fine-grained RBAC, aligning with least-privilege principles and enterprise governance requirements.
  • Design resilient data architectures on AWS, selecting appropriate managed database and storage services (Amazon RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, Amazon S3, Glacier, FSx) and defining backup, retention, encryption-at-rest/in-transit, lifecycle policies, and cross-region replication strategies.
  • Create and enforce cloud security and compliance architectures, integrating AWS security services (AWS KMS, AWS Shield, AWS WAF, AWS Config, Amazon Inspector, Macie, Security Hub, GuardDuty) and mapping controls to regulatory frameworks such as SOC2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO 27001.
  • Lead cost optimization initiatives by analyzing AWS spend, selecting appropriate instance families and savings plans, rightsizing resources, implementing auto-scaling policies, lifecycle management for storage, and recommending architectural changes that reduce overall TCO without sacrificing performance.
  • Define and implement CI/CD pipelines and release automation patterns for infrastructure and application code using AWS CodePipeline/CodeBuild/CodeDeploy, Jenkins, GitHub Actions, or GitLab CI, and integrate automated testing and blue/green or canary deployment strategies.
  • Architect containerized workloads using Amazon ECS, EKS, and Fargate, including cluster sizing, network policies, service mesh considerations (App Mesh/Envoy/Istio), ingress/e-gress design, Helm chart management, and secure image registry and scanning integration.
  • Design and operationalize event-driven and serverless architectures using AWS Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, SNS, SQS, and Kinesis, identifying appropriate use cases and balancing trade-offs for cold start, concurrency, and cost.
  • Establish observability frameworks by defining metrics, distributed tracing, logging, and alerting designs using Amazon CloudWatch, CloudWatch Logs, CloudWatch Metrics, CloudWatch Logs Insights, X-Ray, OpenTelemetry, and integrations with third-party APM/logging platforms.
  • Implement backup, disaster recovery (DR) and business continuity plans across AWS accounts and Regions, defining Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs), runbooks, automated failover, and testing schedules for critical applications and data stores.
  • Conduct architecture reviews and solution validation sessions with engineering teams; perform risk assessments, identify single points of failure, and prescribe remediation strategies for security, resiliency, and scalability.
  • Develop network security and micro-segmentation strategies including VPC peering, Transit Gateway, security groups, NACLs, VPN/Direct Connect, and design for cross-account connectivity and service endpoints (VPC Endpoints, Interface Endpoints) to minimize public exposure.
  • Drive platform automation by designing self-service infrastructure platforms, internal developer portals, and reusable platform components that accelerate developer velocity while enforcing guardrails and policies through automation.
  • Lead proof-of-concept projects and POCs to evaluate new AWS services, partner solutions, and third-party tools; produce technical evaluations, cost estimates, and implementation recommendations aligned to business value.
  • Mentor and coach engineering teams on cloud-native design patterns, anti-patterns, performance optimization, secure coding practices, and operational best practices to increase team capability and cloud fluency.
  • Create and maintain architecture documentation, reference architectures, runbooks, playbooks, and standard operating procedures (SOPs) to support onboarding, incident response, compliance audits, and knowledge transfer.
  • Collaborate closely with Security, Risk & Compliance, Legal, and Finance stakeholders to translate regulatory and business requirements into enforceable cloud controls, tagging and cost allocation strategies, and audit-ready configurations.
  • Optimize application performance and scalability by conducting capacity planning, load testing, and tuning compute, database, caching, and I/O architectures; recommend horizontal and vertical scaling patterns and caching strategies.
  • Manage vendor and partner relationships for cloud tooling, managed services, and professional services engagements; define statements of work, assess vendor proposals, and oversee technical delivery to ensure alignment with the architecture vision.
  • Establish governance, landing zone, and multi-account strategy including account provisioning automation, tagging standards, baseline security controls, and guardrails for rapid, secure account onboarding.
  • Participate in incident response and post-incident reviews; own root cause analysis for cloud infrastructure incidents, drive remediation plans, and implement automated detection and self-healing mechanisms to reduce mean time to recovery (MTTR).

Secondary Functions

  • Support ad-hoc data requests and exploratory data analysis.
  • Contribute to the organization's data strategy and roadmap.
  • Collaborate with business units to translate data needs into engineering requirements.
  • Participate in sprint planning and agile ceremonies within the data engineering team.
  • Provide technical support for sales and pre-sales efforts, producing architecture diagrams, solution whitepapers, and cost estimates for customer proposals.
  • Maintain relationships with internal stakeholders and provide regular architecture forums, brown-bag sessions, and training on AWS best practices.
  • Monitor emerging cloud trends and evaluate new AWS features and partner ecosystems for potential adoption and competitive advantage.
  • Assist in hiring and interviewing candidates for cloud engineering and architecture roles, helping to grow a high-performing cloud team.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Advanced proficiency in AWS core services: EC2, S3, VPC, IAM, RDS/Aurora, DynamoDB, Lambda, API Gateway, SQS, SNS, Kinesis, CloudTrail, CloudWatch, CloudFormation.
  • Strong experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, AWS CDK) and configuration management tools.
  • Container orchestration and microservices platforms: Amazon EKS, ECS/Fargate, Docker, Helm, and service mesh experience.
  • Deep knowledge of networking and hybrid connectivity on AWS: VPC design, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect, VPN, VPC endpoints, routing and firewall concepts.
  • Cloud security architecture: IAM design, KMS, encryption, WAF, Shield, GuardDuty, Security Hub, vulnerability scanning, and secure secret management (AWS Secrets Manager / HashiCorp Vault).
  • Database architecture and migration: RDS/Aurora administration, DynamoDB design, replication, backup/restore, and AWS DMS experience.
  • CI/CD and DevOps tooling: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, CodePipeline, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, and pipeline-as-code best practices.
  • Observability and monitoring: CloudWatch, X-Ray, OpenTelemetry, ELK/EFK, Prometheus/Grafana, and log aggregation/analysis.
  • Cost management and optimization: AWS Cost Explorer, Billing/Tagging strategies, savings plans, Reserved Instances, and rightsizing methodologies.
  • Disaster recovery and high availability planning, RTO/RPO design, cross-region failover, and automated recovery orchestration.
  • Scripting and automation: Python, Bash, PowerShell, and experience building automation and tooling for operational tasks.
  • Experience with hybrid and multi-cloud architectures, federation patterns, and interoperability concerns.
  • Knowledge of compliance frameworks (SOC2, PCI, HIPAA, GDPR) and ability to implement AWS controls to meet audit requirements.
  • Familiarity with infrastructure testing, chaos engineering, and resilience testing frameworks.

Soft Skills

  • Strong communication skills with the ability to translate complex technical concepts into business terms and present to executives and stakeholders.
  • Leadership and mentorship capability to grow cloud competency across engineering teams and guide technical decision-making.
  • Strategic thinking with a pragmatic, business-oriented approach to designing cost-effective, scalable solutions.
  • Excellent collaboration and cross-functional influence skills to work effectively with product, security, finance, and operations teams.
  • Problem-solving mindset, attention to detail, and the ability to prioritize in high-pressure situations.
  • Customer-focused orientation for internal and external stakeholders, including pre-sales and advisory interactions.
  • Continuous learning mindset and curiosity about new cloud innovations and best practices.
  • Project management acumen and the ability to lead technical initiatives end-to-end.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related technical field; or equivalent industry experience.

Preferred Education:

  • Master’s degree in Computer Science, Cloud Computing, or MBA with technical background.
  • Relevant AWS certifications (AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, AWS Certified Security – Specialty, AWS Certified DevOps Engineer).

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Computer Science
  • Software Engineering
  • Information Technology
  • Network Engineering
  • Cybersecurity

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 5–12+ years of professional IT experience, with at least 3–5 years focused on AWS architecture and cloud-native design.

Preferred:

  • 8+ years of experience designing and operating production-scale cloud environments with demonstrable outcomes (migrations, cost reductions, improved resilience).
  • Proven track record of leading cross-functional cloud modernization initiatives, hands-on implementation experience with AWS services, and prior experience mentoring or managing smaller cloud teams or architects.
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