AWS SOLUTIONS ARCHITECT JOB DESCRIPTION

Few architecture failures surface as slowly - or cost as much - as a cloud migration that satisfies a proof-of-concept but cannot scale to production load or pass a security audit. That gap is where the AWS Solutions Architect operates: translating an organization's roadmap into well-architected designs that hold up under enterprise SLA pressure and multi-stakeholder scrutiny. The role spans commercial cloud consulting engagements, from initial assessment through deployment governance, requiring command of both infrastructure architecture and the organizational dynamics that determine whether a design actually gets built. Cloud-native and hybrid workloads are the daily terrain.

AWS Solutions Architects in Cloud/IT Consulting & Enterprise Technology are accountable for the end-to-end technical design of client cloud environments - covering architecture assessment, migration strategy, security posture, and deployment standards - ensuring solutions align with both enterprise architecture governance and the client's business objectives. Working across product, engineering, and senior stakeholder teams on concurrent engagements, they serve as the primary technical authority whose recommendations shape infrastructure investment decisions.

Career Impact: Delivering architecture leadership across enterprise cloud migrations builds a portfolio of complex, multi-stakeholder AWS engagements that distinguishes candidates at the AWS Professional Solutions Architect and Cloud Principal levels.

Business Impact: Clients rely on the architect's design decisions to determine whether cloud-hosted systems meet availability, performance, and compliance thresholds - poor architectural choices at this stage propagate into production incidents that are expensive to unwind.

Growth Opportunity: Repeated exposure to DevOps transformation engagements, container orchestration, and enterprise security architecture accelerates the path toward cloud principal, distinguished engineer, or CTO-track roles within consulting or product organizations.

• Design and document cloud architecture solutions spanning assessment, migration, and post-deployment governance to meet client performance and availability requirements.
• Lead technical discussions with engineering, product, and enterprise architecture teams to align cloud designs with long-term infrastructure roadmaps.
• Develop reference architectures and reusable architectural assets that accelerate cloud onboarding across multiple client engagements.
• Evaluate existing applications for refactoring opportunities and recommend modernization approaches including microservices and container-based architectures.
• Review security architecture for cloud infrastructure designs, ensuring authentication, encryption, and access-control requirements are addressed at the design stage.
• Enforce DevOps and automation standards across deployment pipelines to improve release reliability and reduce manual intervention time.
• Mentor engineers and junior architects, guiding technical implementation to ensure fidelity to approved architectural standards.
• Partner with sales and senior leadership as a technical consultant during pre-sales assessments and vendor or partner discussions.

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field, or equivalent work experience.
• 8 or more years of hands-on experience in cloud and enterprise IT architecture, with demonstrated ownership of production-scale AWS deployments.
• Proven ability to design distributed systems spanning compute, networking, storage, and security across hybrid and cloud-native environments.
• Experience leading cloud migration or cloud-first transformation engagements from assessment through production deployment.
• Working knowledge of infrastructure automation, continuous integration and delivery pipelines, and configuration management methodologies.
• Strong communication skills with the ability to translate complex architectural decisions for both technical teams and non-technical executive stakeholders.
• Experience with containerization and orchestration platforms within cloud-deployed workloads.
• AWS certification at the Associate level or above.

• AWS Professional Solutions Architect certification or equivalent advanced cloud credential.
• Hands-on experience with multi-cloud environments, including familiarity with GCP or Azure alongside primary AWS expertise.
• Background in security architecture domains including identity federation, secrets management, and compliance frameworks such as PCI DSS or SOC II.
• Experience working within Agile or SAFe delivery models in a client-facing consulting or professional services context.

• Client solution acceptance rate, measuring how often delivered architecture designs pass governance review without major revision.
• Mean time to resolve architecture blockers, tracking speed at which design ambiguities are closed to keep engineering teams unblocked.
• POC-to-production conversion rate, reflecting how reliably proof-of-concept designs translate into approved deployment blueprints.
• Reusable asset adoption rate, measuring uptake of reference architectures and onboarding accelerators across active client engagements.
• Security review pass rate on first submission, indicating quality of embedded security design before formal cloud security audit.
• Typical tools: infrastructure-as-code (commonly Terraform or CloudFormation); container orchestration (commonly Kubernetes or Docker); CI/CD pipelines (commonly Jenkins or GitLab CI).

• Base Salary Range: $145,000 to $185,000 annually, depending on seniority and location
• Bonus: Performance-based annual bonus, typically 10 to 15% of base salary
• Equity: RSUs or stock options common at larger consulting and technology firms
• Health Benefits: Medical, dental, and vision coverage; employer contribution standard
• PTO: 15 to 20 days annually, plus federal holidays
• Common Perks: AWS certification reimbursement, conference attendance, home-office stipend for remote roles

Figures are estimates based on general US market benchmarks and may be outdated. Adjust based on location, company size, and seniority level.

Background check completion is a condition of employment, and all candidates must be authorized to work in the United States without sponsorship now or in the future. Consideration for all positions is extended to qualified applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, veteran status, genetic information, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other characteristic protected by applicable federal, state, or local law. Applicants who require a reasonable accommodation to participate in the hiring process are encouraged to submit a request at the time of application.

Sitting at the intersection of cloud infrastructure and national security, the AWS Solutions Architect leads the design, deployment, and continuous improvement of large-scale AWS systems, including data processing and advanced analytics, within a DoD environment. Operating across engineering teams and non-technical customer audiences, this role ensures architecture decisions address Risk Management Framework controls and elevate organizational service delivery quality.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the development and implementation of technical efforts to design, build, and deploy AWS systems including large-scale data processing, computationally intensive statistical modeling, and advanced analytics.
• Engineer security-compliant IT system architectures, developing robust documentation.
• Increase team system architecture expertise, enabling the organization to deliver services more efficiently and with higher service quality.
• Drive continuous improvement of the design and implementation of services.
• Ensure that Risk Management Framework (RMF) security controls are well understood and that technical solutions adequately address them.
• Communicate technical topics to customers and non-technical audiences.
• Define and document best practices and strategies regarding application deployment and infrastructure maintenance.
• Ensure application performance, uptime, and scale, maintaining high standards of code quality and thoughtful design.
• Employ exceptional problem-solving skills, with the ability to see and solve issues before they affect business productivity.
• Mentor systems engineers.

Required Qualifications

• BS/BA degree with 10-12 years of relevant experience, or MS with 8-10 years, or PhD with 5-7 years.
• AWS Solution Architect certification and active DoD 8570 certificate such as CompTIA Security+ required.
• Active DoD Secret clearance required, with U.S. citizenship and ability to maintain that clearance.
• Enterprise IT Architecture support experience required.
• Experience in system architecture, cloud migration, system automation, big data, and advanced analytics.
• DoD systems architecture experience, including U.S. Army environment experience preferred.
• Experience supporting AWS GovCloud.
• Understanding of UML or TOGAF.
• Ability to develop system diagrams and documentation.
• Strong leadership and communication skills.

Reporting to the Director of AWS, the AWS Solutions Architect designs, migrates, and integrates customer systems with AWS while creating and maintaining custom scripts and automations to increase system efficiency. Partnering closely with the AWS Managed Services team and Technical and Application Consultants, this role resolves client system issues and enables scalable cloud-hosted infrastructure that meets SLA standards.

Core Functions

• Design, migrate, and integrate customer systems with AWS.
• Create and maintain custom scripts and automations to increase system efficiency and lower human intervention time.
• Perform ongoing performance tuning, upgrades, and resource optimization.
• Provide remote support for AWS Managed Services clients via all channels, adhering to SLA guidelines with thorough and timely communication.
• Interact with Technical and Application Consultants and customer staff to support, scale, and maintain customer cloud-hosted infrastructure.
• Assist with root cause and failure analysis to resolve system problems.
• Lead detailed technical discussions and perform analysis and design to ensure customer needs are met.

Qualifications & Experience

• At least two AWS Associate certifications (Solutions Architect, DevOps, or SysOps) and at least one AWS Professional certification required.
• 5+ years of experience in an AWS senior role, combined with 5+ years of Windows/Linux system administration, storage, and network experience.
• Experience with ITIL, PCI, SOX, SOC I, and SOC II compliance frameworks.
• Knowledge of servers, networks, storage, client-server systems, firewalls, core network services, routers, switches, VPN, and load balancing.
• Experience with virtualization technologies including VMware and Hyper-V.
• Experience with storage configuration, server optimization, hardening, vulnerability research, and remediation.
• Experience in reading, writing, or modifying PowerShell, Bash, and Python scripts, and using Git.
• Experience with automation tools such as Puppet, Chef, Salt, or Ansible, and with SQL or Oracle database administration.
• Experience with Oracle JD Edwards, EBS, or SAP platforms preferred.
• Strong communication skills with ability to work independently and provide guidance to junior staff.
• English language fluency required.

Embedded within a cloud transformation team, the AWS Solutions Architect delivers technical leadership across authentication, encryption, and secrets management to align security solutions with cloud strategy on AWS and GCP. Working closely with Engineers and partner Architects, this role authors reference architecture artifacts and accelerates cloud onboarding while influencing the broader technology roadmap.

Primary Duties

• Develop, optimize, or recommend security solutions aligned with cloud strategy across authentication, entitlement, MFA, federation, encryption, and secrets management.
• Review and recommend updates to security policies and processes to enable development teams to deploy applications with confidence in their security posture.
• Provide security architecture guidance to application teams adopting cloud services.
• Collaborate with the Engineering team on service whitelisting and guardrail processes for cloud services.
• Develop reusable assets to accelerate cloud onboarding and address vulnerability concerns through best practices and optimization.

Skills & Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or Computer Engineering.
• CISSP, AWS Security, or equivalent certification required.
• 8+ years of progressive architecture experience covering application, security, and cloud architecture.
• Experience with cloud-native architecture on AWS, with familiarity with GCP as a plus.
• Experience with containers including OpenShift, Docker, and Kubernetes, and with client-server enterprise Java J2EE web application development.
• Experience with application middleware such as WAS and Tomcat, and with CI tools such as Jenkins, RTC, and RLM.
• Knowledge of security domains including authentication, entitlements, encryption, MFA, and federation.
• Knowledge of big data stack components such as Elasticsearch, Hadoop, HDFS, and Kafka is a plus.
• Strong communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills.

A key member of Baker Tilly Digital's technical consulting practice, the AWS Solutions Architect refines cloud architecture strategies and delivers scalable solutions that help customers adopt modern architectures, including microservices and containers. Collaborating across sales, engineering, and enterprise architecture teams, this role closes project gaps and shapes technology direction for public cloud migrations and IT transformations.

Duties

• Provide robust and scalable technology solutions to enable customers to scale their operations into public cloud.
• Provide a detailed understanding of cloud software, platforms, and infrastructure services and well-architected principles.
• Participate in or lead POC development to assist in defining technology direction for customers.
• Drive engagements related to assessing, refactoring, and identifying opportunities for existing applications to adopt modern architectures such as microservices and containers.
• Influence and provide input into the future direction of enterprise architecture programs.
• Define and document architecture and technology standards, reference architectures, solution architectures, constraints, and guidelines.

Education & Experience

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience in a relevant technical field.
• Cloud-related certifications required, with AWS certifications preferred.
• 8 years of design and implementation experience with distributed applications and systems, including enterprise data-center and private cloud technologies.
• 3 years of hands-on experience architecting solutions on AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Experience with on-premise to cloud migrations and IT transformations, and with cloud security requirements and best practices.
• Experience with containerization technologies, including Kubernetes and Docker, and with PaaS platforms such as Pivotal, Cloud Foundry, and OpenShift.
• Working knowledge of infrastructure automation, CI/CD, SQL/NoSQL, networking, and cloud-based delivery models.
• Working knowledge of virtualization software such as VMware or KVM.
• Scripting ability in one or more languages, including Java, Python, JavaScript, C/C++, C#, or Objective-C.
• Working knowledge of software development and automation tools, including Jenkins, Git, Terraform, and Chef.
• Experience working closely with sales and marketing teams in cloud computing or related technical fields.
• Ability to travel as required.

As the AWS Solutions Architect, this role leads cloud architecture engagements with a specific focus on AWS, providing architectural leadership to internal and client teams across strategy development, migration projects, and deployment. The engineering and DevOps teams rely on this work to ensure cloud infrastructure designs meet security, agility, and quality standards through proven DevOps approaches and toolsets.

Functions

• Undertake cloud architecture engagements with a specific focus on AWS and provide architectural leadership to internal and client teams.
• Execute cloud strategy development and migration projects, design and deploy cloud architecture, and make architectural recommendations for implementation, deployment, and provisioning of applications.
• Apply DevOps practices to bring development and IT operations processes, people, and tools closer together to improve speed, efficiency, and quality.
• Support security architecture reviews of cloud infrastructure designs.
• Provide technical input to architecture governance processes and forums for new AWS services.
• Work with DevOps teams to ensure projects are successfully delivered using DevOps approaches and toolsets.

Requirements

• Experience in IT consulting with a focus on public cloud-based solutions.
• Hands-on experience architecting, estimating costs for, and operating solutions built on AWS, including EC2, Lambda, S3, RDS, DynamoDB, and VPC configurations.
• Experience migrating or transforming legacy solutions to the cloud, and designing cloud networks including VPC and subnets.
• Experience designing for security and for failure in large-scale application architectures.
• Working knowledge of DevOps tools and methodologies including Terraform and Ansible, and of microservices and container-based systems including Docker, Kubernetes, and Mesos.
• Strong grasp of Agile and Lean delivery concepts and methodologies.
• Strong critical thinking skills with the ability to assess multiple solutions and select the most appropriate one based on business needs.

Seamless digital product delivery depends on the AWS Solutions Architect, who owns solution architecture across functional, integration, data, and infrastructure design while aligning technical decisions with long-term enterprise architecture strategy. Based within the Digital technology team and serving senior leaders, partner organizations, and vendor stakeholders, this role drives automation through DevOps and Agile practices and mentors technical resources to take full ownership of solution implementation.

Accountabilities

• Own solution architecture for all digital products and drive the entire technical design, including functional, integration, data, and infrastructure design.
• Partner with Product, UX, Enterprise Architecture, and Engineering teams to establish architectural plans across multiple solution areas.
• Deliver clear, pragmatic solutions aligned with immediate business needs and long-term enterprise architecture strategy.
• Evaluate, design, document, and establish technical protocols and standards for use within the enterprise.
• Serve as a technology consultant to senior leaders and represent the Digital technology team in partner and vendor discussions.
• Assist the team in achieving high degrees of automation using DevOps and Agile practices, and drive improvements to deployment and release pipelines.
• Mentor technical resources to help them take full ownership of implementing solution designs and participate in backlog planning and prioritization.

Experience & Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in a related area or an equivalent combination of education and experience.
• 6+ years of hands-on experience in cloud architecture and enterprise solutions.
• Experience with AWS technologies, serverless, containers and orchestration, continuous delivery, and DevOps best practices, including in hybrid On-Premise, Cloud, and SaaS environments.
• Experience with highly transactional accounts, payment-related websites, and systems with significant third-party API integrations.
• Knowledge of JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js, and ability to architect solutions using React and other SPA frameworks.
• Strong skills in site reliability engineering and ability to ensure secure, scalable, performant, and highly available services.
• Strong customer relationship, interpersonal, analytical, problem-solving, and communication skills.
• Ability to adapt quickly to changing priorities.