As a Senior IT Cloud Technical Architect, you will play a strategic and technical leadership role in designing, governing, and evolving our cloud ecosystem across Azure and multi-cloud platforms. Your focus will be to define scalable, secure, and cost-optimized cloud solutions aligned with enterprise architecture standards, supporting both digital transformation and platform engineering initiatives.
This role demands both technical excellence and cross-functional collaboration, contributing to enterprise-wide cloud adoption, automation, and modernization strategies. You will act as a cloud authority, ensuring best practices in governance, security, compliance, and operational readiness.
Responsibilities
- Architectural Leadership:
- Join the Cloud Services team and take a leading role in translating business and IT strategies into scalable, secure, and resilient cloud solutions.
- Design and govern Azure and multi-cloud reference architectures, aligning technical implementations with enterprise architecture standards.
- Contribute to the development of reusable components and platform building blocks to enable consistent cloud adoption.
- Cloud Governance and Standards:
- Define and enforce enterprise-wide cloud standards covering networking, identity, resource organization, cost management, and security.
- Develop and maintain landing zones and shared service models that ensure compliance, operational efficiency, and scalability.
- Contribute to the Cloud Design Authority and document decisions using standardized formats such as Adrs.
- Infrastructure Automation and DevOps Enablement :
- Promote automation-first approaches through Infrastructure as Code.
- Support the integration of CI/CD pipelines to enable secure and consistent cloud deployments.
- Collaborate with engineering teams to industrialize cloud provisioning and ensure reusability of components.
- Security and Compliance Integration:
- Embed security best practices into cloud designs, including Zero Trust principles, network segmentation, encryption, and identity-based access control.
- Collaborate with CISO teams to ensure cloud environments meet internal and regulatory compliance standards such as NIS2, ISO 27001, and CIS Benchmarks.
- Support the implementation of guardrails using Azure Policy, Defender for Cloud, and role-based access models.
- Cloud Operations and Optimization:
- Support the development of operational models and readiness plans, ensuring monitoring, logging, and cost management capabilities are integrated into every solution.
- Guide workload placement strategies across cloud regions and availability zones, balancing resilience and cost.
- Collaborate with platform teams to streamline cloud operations through automation and observability practices.
- Data Services and Cloud-native Databases :
- Support the design and integration of database solutions within cloud architectures, ensuring alignment with performance,to enable managed database services, data encryption strategies, backup policies, and high-availability configurations.
- Ensure architectural decisions support compliance, DR, and performance SLAs.
- Cloud Financial Management (FinOps) :
- Implement and promote FinOps practices to ensure financial accountability across cloud environments.
- Define cost allocation strategies, enforce tagging policies, and establish chargeback/showback models in collaboration with Finance teams.
- Support forecasting and budgeting activities through consumption insights, cost optimization techniques, and continuous monitoring of cloud spend.
- Engage with stakeholders to drive a culture of cost-awareness and value-driven cloud usage.
- Collaboration and Mentorship: Work closely with cross-functional teams, providing guidance and mentorship to technical staff and ensuring successful project delivery.
Requirements
- Educational background: A master's degree in computer science, information systems, or equivalent hands-on experience managing complex data center operations
- Technical expertise:
- Extensive hands-on experience in Microsoft Azure cloud architecture, including governance, landing zones, network segmentation, identity management, and secure connectivity.
- Strong knowledge of multi-cloud and hybrid integration strategies
- Proficiency in Infrastructure as Code using tools such as TerraForm (preferred), ARM templates, with the ability to design modular, reusable, and secure automation components.
- Practical knowledge of DevOps and GitOps approaches for cloud-native workloads, leveraging tools such as Azure DevOps and Flux to enable continuous deployment and ensure environment consistency.
- Familiarity with container orchestration and Kubernetes (preferably AKS), including workload identity and network policy design.
- Solid understanding of cloud-native services (PaaS, serverless, Storage, monitoring) and their integration.
- Good grasp of cloud networking and security design, including Zero Trust principles, segmentation, and policy enforcement.
- Experience integrating security and compliance controls into cloud architectures (e.g., NIS2, ISO 27001, CIS Benchmarks, Defender for Cloud).
- Experience designing and integrating database services into cloud architectures, considering availability, security, and performance requirements.
- Practical knowledge of FinOps principles and cloud cost optimization techniques, including tagging, chargeback, and showback models.
- Experience:
- Minimum 15 years of IT experience, with at least 10 years focused specifically on cloud architecture.
- Proven experience designing, delivering, and governing enterprise-scale cloud solutions in regulated or large-scale environments.
- Demonstrated ability to define standards, drive architectural decisions, and guide solution delivery across multiple teams and domains.
- Experience working in a Cloud Center of Excellence or similar governance framework is a plus.
- Leadership and communication:
- Excellent communication skills with the ability to explain complex technical solutions to business stakeholders and C-level leadership.
- Capable of working autonomously while contributing effectively to cross-functional teams.
- Experienced in mentoring and guiding architects, engineers, and project stakeholders toward successful cloud outcomes.
- Soft skills:
- Analytical and structured mindset with strong decision-making abilities.
- Results-oriented with the ability to manage priorities across multiple concurrent initiatives.
- Strong collaboration skills with a customer-focused and value-driven approach to cloud solutions
- General competencies:
- Language Proficiency: Fluency in French, Dutch, and English is mandatory, both written and spoken.
- Team Collaboration: Proven ability to work effectively across multidisciplinary teams in a federated IT environment.
- Technical Writing: Strong capability to produce architecture documents, standards, and technical guidelines, tailored to various audiences including technical experts and non-technical stakeholders.
