Senior Cloud Architect — Azure Migration & Modernization

We’re looking for a Senior Cloud Architect to join our team on a large-scale application migration and modernization program for a major US enterprise organization.
The initiative focuses on migrating a complex enterprise application portfolio from VMware-based data centers to Microsoft Azure, including both Azure-native services and Azure Local environments.
This is a senior, hands-on architecture role. You will lead application portfolio assessment, migration disposition and dependency analysis, target architecture design, migration wave planning, and application-level migration designs. You will work closely with DevOps Engineers, QA, Delivery Management, and client platform, network, security, database, and application teams.
The role is delivery-focused: you will not only define architecture but also produce the actual migration designs and deliverables required to move applications successfully.

Project Overview

The program involves assessing and migrating a large enterprise application and virtual machine estate from VMware-based infrastructure toward Azure.
The initiative focuses on:

• Application Portfolio Assessment: analyzing applications, infrastructure, dependencies, criticality, and migration readiness
• Migration Strategy: determining appropriate migration dispositions such as retain, retire, rehost, replatform, refactor, or rebuild
• Dependency & Affinity Analysis: identifying application dependencies and defining logical migration move groups
• Migration Wave Planning: sequencing applications according to dependencies, complexity, criticality, capacity, and change windows
• Azure & Azure Local Architecture: designing appropriate target architectures across cloud-native and hybrid environments
• Network Transition: defining networking, firewall, routing, load-balancing, and DNS changes required during migration
• Resilience & Disaster Recovery: designing application-level availability, backup, replication, and recovery strategies
• Migration Industrialization: ensuring designs can be implemented through existing Terraform and CI/CD tooling

Technology Landscape

Primary Cloud: Microsoft Azure
Hybrid Cloud: Azure Local / Azure Stack HCI, Azure Arc
Source Platform: VMware vSphere / vSAN
Infrastructure as Code: Terraform
CI/CD: Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions
Networking: Azure VNet, NSG, Azure Firewall, Load Balancer, Application Gateway, ExpressRoute, VPN, DNS
Identity & Security: Microsoft Entra ID, RBAC, Managed Identities, Key Vault
Observability: Azure Monitor, Log Analytics
Migration & Recovery: Azure Migrate, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Backup
Modernization: AKS, Azure App Service, managed databases
Secondary Cloud: AWS

Responsibilities

• Lead assessment of enterprise application and virtual machine portfolios and normalize discovery and assessment data.
• Identify missing or unreliable information and maintain a structured data-gap register.
• Facilitate disposition workshops with application owners and technical stakeholders.
• Define migration dispositions including retain, retire, rehost, replatform, refactor, and rebuild.
• Develop and calibrate application complexity scoring and T-shirt sizing models.
• Analyze technology footprints across databases, middleware, application servers, operating systems, and infrastructure platforms.
• Identify application modernization and containerization opportunities.
• Validate application dependencies and affinity groups using discovery data and technical analysis.
• Define migration move groups and wave plans considering criticality, dependencies, capacity, and change-freeze windows.
• Design target architectures for applications migrating to Azure-native and Azure Local environments.
• Define network transition patterns covering IP addressing, VLAN/VNet/subnet assignments, firewall rules, routing, load balancing, and DNS.
• Define resilience and recovery strategies based on application criticality.
• Evaluate application-native resilience patterns such as database replication, clustering, and cross-site load balancing.
• Define cloud-native recovery patterns using Azure Availability Zones, Azure Site Recovery, Azure Backup, and related services.
• Review application migration designs before implementation.
• Contribute to migration runbooks, rollback criteria, validation frameworks, and cutover strategies.
• Review Terraform modules and CI/CD pipelines together with DevOps Engineers to ensure architecture designs are implementable through the client’s existing toolchain.
• Produce forward delivery plans, migration waves, move groups, and technical decision registers.
• Own architecture and migration-design deliverables through client review and acceptance.
• Present and defend technical decisions with enterprise architecture, network, security, database, platform, and application teams.

Candidate Requirements

Must-have

• 8+ years of experience in infrastructure, cloud, platform engineering, or related disciplines.
• 3+ years working as a Cloud Architect, Solution Architect, or Technical Lead on cloud or data-center migration programs.
• Hands-on experience delivering at least one significant VMware-to-Azure or VMware-to-hybrid-cloud migration.
• Experience with large application or infrastructure estates, ideally 100+ applications or 1,000+ VMs.
• Strong Microsoft Azure architecture expertise.
• Practical experience with application portfolio assessment and migration disposition modeling.
• Experience with 6R-style migration strategies and application migration decision frameworks.
• Strong experience with dependency analysis, affinity grouping, move-group planning, and migration wave planning.
• Experience developing migration complexity models and T-shirt sizing.
• Hands-on experience with Azure Migrate or comparable enterprise migration tooling.
• Strong understanding of Azure networking, including VNets, NSGs, Azure Firewall, load balancing, private DNS, ExpressRoute, and VPN.
• Strong understanding of identity and access management using Microsoft Entra ID, RBAC, and managed identities.
• Working knowledge of Azure Local / Azure Stack HCI and Azure Arc.
• Solid understanding of VMware vSphere and vSAN environments.
• Strong enterprise networking knowledge covering IP addressing, VLANs, subnets, routing, firewalls, load balancing, and DNS.
• Experience designing application resilience and disaster-recovery strategies.
• Working knowledge of Windows Server and Linux.
• Sufficient knowledge of Oracle, SQL Server, and enterprise middleware to make informed migration and modernization decisions.
• Ability to understand Terraform code and Azure DevOps/GitHub pipelines and ensure designs are implementable through an existing client-owned toolchain.
• Experience producing client-ready architecture diagrams, migration registers, scoring models, and technical design documents.
• Strong stakeholder-management and workshop-facilitation skills.
• Excellent written and spoken English.
• Ability to work with distributed teams and directly engage with US-based enterprise clients.
• Availability to maintain meaningful overlap with US business hours and occasionally support planned migration or cutover windows outside standard working hours.

Nice-to-have

• Hands-on AWS architecture or migration experience, including EC2, VPC, IAM, AWS Application Migration Service, and Direct Connect.
• Production experience with Azure Local.
• Experience with AKS or Kubernetes.
• Application modernization experience beyond simple rehosting.
• Experience migrating workloads toward Azure PaaS or managed database services.
• Experience reducing legacy Oracle, middleware, or infrastructure footprints.
• Experience in highly regulated industries such as energy, utilities, financial services, healthcare, or the public sector.
• Experience working under formal change-management and change-freeze processes.
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305).
• TOGAF or similar architecture certification.
• AWS architecture certification.

AI Engineering Mindset

We expect senior technical professionals to actively use modern AI-assisted engineering tools to improve delivery quality and productivity.
Practical use of AI for architecture analysis, documentation, Terraform/code review, troubleshooting, migration planning, and technical research is strongly encouraged.
Candidates should be comfortable incorporating AI-assisted workflows while maintaining appropriate engineering review, security, and quality controls.

Engagement Model

You will work as part of a small cross-functional delivery team typically consisting of:

• Delivery Manager
• Cloud Architect
• DevOps Engineers
• QA / Test Automation Engineer

The engagement follows a fixed-scope, fixed-timeline delivery model, requiring strong ownership, pragmatic decision-making, and close collaboration with client teams.
The role is remote, with working-hour overlap with US-based client teams.

Why Work With Us?

Our Culture

• Open communication and a focus on psychological safety
• Recognition of achievements and contributions
• Collaboration across multicultural and distributed teams
• Less bureaucracy, more focus on results
• Exposure to complex enterprise cloud-transformation initiatives
• Opportunity to influence architecture and migration decisions on large-scale programs

Hiring Process

1. Intro / Pre-screen Call
2. Technical Interview
3. Manager Interview
4. Pre-offer Stage + Reference Check (if requested)
5. Official Offer