Certifications

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional — required, or clearly demonstrated equivalent expert-level skill.
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert — required, or clearly demonstrated equivalent expert-level skill.
• Google Professional Cloud Architect — strongly preferred.
• TOGAF 9/10 or equivalent enterprise architecture certification — beneficial.
• FinOps Certified Practitioner — beneficial.

Adjacent Technical Skills (Beneficial, Not Required)

Depth in the specialist area above is mandatory. Experience in the following adjacent domains is a strong plus and will be valued in candidate evaluation, since it enables broader solution ownership across engagements.

• Networking (routing/switching, SD-WAN) given the centrality of hybrid connectivity to this role.
• Virtualization platforms (VMware, Red Hat OpenShift/OpenStack) as common migration source environments.
• Security architecture, particularly zero trust and cloud security posture management.
• Containers and Kubernetes depth beyond managed-service operation.
• Data platform and analytics services across the hyperscalers (data lakes, warehousing, streaming).
• AI/ML cloud services, given the growing overlap between cloud migration and AI platform enablement.

Leadership & Delivery Expectations

• Leads technical delivery independently and acts as the final technical authority on cloud and migration decisions for an engagement.
• Mentors other cloud architects and engineers across multiple hyperscaler platforms.
• Navigates multi-vendor, multi-cloud complexity confidently, translating it into a clear, risk-managed migration roadmap for clients.
• Communicates cloud strategy and migration risk clearly to both hands-on engineering teams and infrastructure leadership.
• Comfortable owning migration cutover windows and the associated risk management.