Principal Cloud Solutions Architect (Night Shift)
About the Opportunity
The Senior Cloud Solutions Architect is a technical leader who defines, builds, and governs the company’s enterprise cloud architecture—while staying close to the ground to enable and upskill platform engineering teams. This role is equal parts strategist and practitioner, driving modernization through automation, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and DevSecOps best practices across AWS and Azure.
You’ll bridge architectural vision with execution—designing scalable, secure, and cost-optimized cloud environments while mentoring engineering teams to operate and evolve them independently.
What You’ll Get to Do
Cloud Strategy & Architecture
Define and maintain the Dayforce Corporate IT’s cloud architecture roadmap, standards, and patterns across AWS and Azure.
Lead modernization efforts focused on infrastructure automation and CI/CD enablement.
Architect solutions that balance security, performance, scalability, and cost optimization, ensuring alignment with enterprise and security standards.
Drive consistency through reference architectures, reusable templates, and automated guardrails.
Collaborate with Enterprise Architecture, Security, and Infrastructure teams to ensure governance and design alignment across domains.
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) & Automation
Champion and implement IaC practices using Terraform, CloudFormation, and Ansible, ensuring infrastructure is fully versioned, automated, and repeatable.
Lead the design of automated pipelines for provisioning, configuration management, and deployment across multi-environment setups.
Define and enforce standards for GitOps, CI/CD, and automated testing of infrastructure changes.
Introduce and maintain self-service capabilities for development and operations teams through IaC modules and templates.
Review and optimize existing scripts, configurations, and automation frameworks for performance and maintainability.
Hands-On Enablement & Technical Leadership
Work directly with Infrastructure Engineering and Cloud Operations teams, guiding them in applying best practices in IaC, automation, and observability.
Provide technical training, workshops, and code reviews to upskill engineers and promote a “build-with” approach rather than “build-for.”
Act as a hands-on coach during the design, implementation, and troubleshooting of cloud infrastructure and CI/CD pipelines.
Serve as a trusted advisor and mentor, helping teams balance agility and compliance in their cloud deployments.
Security, Governance & Cost Optimization
Embed security by design—defining patterns for encryption, access control, and monitoring within IaC frameworks.
Implement tagging standards, budgets, and automated policies to manage costs and ensure visibility across environments.
Partner with Security and Compliance teams to align with regulatory and governance frameworks.
Continuously evaluate new AWS and Azure services to enhance automation, reliability, and performance.
Collaboration & Delivery
Collaborate with product, platform, and security leaders to align infrastructure strategy with business needs.
Partner with engineering leads to define environment requirements, deployment models, and operational standards.
Support project delivery by providing architectural oversight and hands-on implementation as needed.
Participate in Architecture Review Boards to guide design decisions and enforce architectural discipline.
Skills and Experience We Value
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field(Master’s preferred).
AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional(required); additional Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification strongly preferred.
7+ years of experience designing and implementing enterprise-scale cloud and infrastructure solutions, with at least 5 years hands-on in AWS and/or Azure environments.
Proven track record of architecting and deploying Infrastructure as Code (IaC)using Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, or Ansible, with deep understanding of version control, pipelines, and automation best practices.
Strong hands-on experience building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines(e.g., GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Azure DevOps), integrating automated testing, security, and policy enforcement.
Practical experience with containerization and orchestration technologies (ECS, EKS, AKS, Docker) to support scalable, resilient infrastructure designs.
Solid background in networking, identity and access management (IAM), security-by-design principles, and cost optimization within cloud environments.
Skilled in scripting and automation(Python, PowerShell, or Bash) for infrastructure deployment, configuration, and monitoring.
Experienced in mentoring platform engineering and DevOps teams, driving adoption of IaC, automation, and cloud-native best practices.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to simplify complex technical topics for diverse audiences, from engineers to executives.