Lead Technical Architect - Cloud

Lead Technical Architect - Cloud

• Remote - With occasionally visits to site South London
• SC Cleared or eligible for SC Clearance
• Permanent role - £90000 + package and benefits

Digital Skills are looking for an experienced and highly skilled Lead Technical Architect with expertise in cloud-based architectures. You will play a vital role in designing, implementing, and overseeing advanced cloud applications and infrastructure solutions for critical systems. With experience and a deep knowledge of security architecture on cloud platforms, you will provide technical leadership and strategic direction in building scalable, secure, and resilient cloud-native systems based on AWS, Kubernetes, Kafka, microservices, Java, and event-driven design.

Key Responsibilities:

• Lead the design of cloud-based systems and solutions, utilising AWS and modern architectural patterns such as microservices, event-driven architectures, and serverless computing to meet business needs.
• Ability to communicate by writing effectively, to produce new content, to write up designs, create architectural decisions, to produce high-quality visio/draw.io diagrams, presentations and confluence pages.
• Develop and implement robust security architectures for cloud solutions, ensuring data protection, regulatory compliance, and alignment with industry best practices (eg, AWS IAM, encryption, VPC, security monitoring, and auditing).
• Architect and oversee containerised environments using Kubernetes, ensuring high availability, scalability, and fault tolerance for critical applications.
• Lead teams to architect event-driven systems using Kafka, designing and managing messaging frameworks to handle Real Time data processing across distributed microservices.
• Design and oversee the development of microservices-based systems, establishing best practices for modularity, scalability, and maintainability, with a focus on Java-based Back End services.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to architecture and development teams, leading guiding them through complex technical challenges and architectural decisions.
• Providing architectural governance, standards and principles including leading Technical Design Authority level design, design assurance and discussions.
• Ensure that cloud architectures are compliant with industry regulations (eg, GDPR, HIPAA) and company security policies, and implement security controls across the infrastructure.
• Champion the development of CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code (IaC), and automation to enable fast and reliable delivery of cloud services.
• Work closely with DevOps, engineering teams, product management, and stakeholders to ensure that architectural strategies align with both technical and business objectives.
• Drive performance tuning, cost optimisation, and cloud resource management strategies to maximise efficiency and minimise cloud spend.
• Identify and mitigate technical risks in cloud-based systems and infrastructure.
• Develop and maintain architectural standards, design patterns, and documentation, ensuring a shared understanding of technical solutions; capturing and documenting architectural decisions.

Required skills and experience:

• At least 8 years of experience in designing and implementing large-scale, distributed cloud systems, with a strong focus on AWS.
• Extensive experience with cloud security architecture, including knowledge of AWS security best practices (eg, IAM, network security, encryption).
• Deep expertise in containerisation technologies (Docker) and Kubernetes for orchestration in production environments.
• Proven experience in designing and implementing event-driven architectures, with strong expertise in queue-based systems including Kafka.
• Strong background in microservices architecture and hands-on experience with Java-based Back End systems.
• In-depth understanding of CI/CD pipelines, infrastructure as code (eg, Terraform, CloudFormation), and automated deployment processes.
• Excellent communication and leadership skills, with the ability to collaborate effectively with cross-functional teams and provide technical mentorship.
• Experience with monitoring and logging tools (eg, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK Stack) and cloud cost optimisation strategies.
• AWS certification(s) (eg, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, AWS Certified Security - Specialty).
• Familiarity with serverless architectures and AWS Lambda.
• Experience with advanced security practices such as zero-trust architecture, encryption key management, and security incident response.
• Delivery of government secure solutions.
• Adhere to architectural standards and frameworks eg TOGAF

If this sounds like the right role for you and you have the required skills and experience, please apply.