Principal Cloud Architect

For our client, an important company operating in IT/Cloud Services/Data Center/web hosting services, we are searching for an expert and outstanding:

Cloud Principal / Technical Cloud Strategist

Within the Datacenter Systems team, the role is responsible for defining and leading the technical strategy of company’s cloud services, supporting the architectural evolution of platforms and acting as a key technical reference point. The position combines long-term strategic vision with strong execution capabilities.

We are looking for a highly experienced IT professional with a strong systems/infrastructure background, capable of acting as a bridge between Business and Engineering. This role defines technological roadmaps, establishes standards and reference architectures, and supports teams in delivering scalable, secure, reliable, and competitive cloud services.

Key Responsibilities:

- Define, own, and safeguard the technical cloud strategy for company’s cloud services, with a focus on scalability, security, reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.
- Drive high-level architectural and technical decisions for the development of new cloud services and the evolution of existing ones.
- Design cloud-native solutions in close collaboration with Product and Engineering teams.
- Governance and security by design in collaboration with the Security team, including security standards (IAM, secrets, encryption, hardening), compliance (e.G. ISO 27001, GDPR, NIS2), disaster recovery (DR), business continuity (BCP), and resilience.
- Cost optimization: review and design cloud services with a value- and cost-optimization mindset, including continuous measurement and tuning.
- Technology scouting & vendor management: market and technology analysis, PoC/PoV evaluation, partner selection and management.
- Mentorship and dissemination: support technical teams through knowledge sharing, guidelines, and clear, strategically oriented technical documentation.
- Perform technical due diligence on new services and conduct periodic reviews of existing services.

Requirements:

- Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or equivalent.
- 15+ years of experience in IT, with at least 5 years focused on cloud architectures and services.
- Strong expertise in distributed architectures, microservices, containerization and orchestration (e.G. Kubernetes), virtualization, and integration with physical systems.
- Advanced knowledge of IT infrastructure (networking, compute, storage), high availability, disaster recovery, and business continuity.
- Excellent communication skills: ability to interact effectively with both technical and non-technical stakeholders, with strong synthesis and technical storytelling capabilities.
- Financial and economic analysis skills: TCO/ROI, cloud cost models, budgeting, and product/service financial management.
- Fluent English.

Nice to Have:

- Experience in multi-cloud environments or cloud providers, and in regulated industries (e.G. finance, public sector, healthcare).
- Certifications such as ITIL, TOGAF, or CNCF-related certifications.
- Knowledge of technologies and standards including the CNCF ecosystem, service mesh, API gateways, object storage, backup and archiving solutions, zero trust, and secret management.
- Familiarity with observability stacks (metrics, logs, traces) and SRE practices.

Soft Skills:

- Strong strategic vision, ownership mindset, and results orientation.
- Technical leadership, mentorship, and ability to influence without formal authority.
- Systems thinking, strong problem-solving skills, and data-informed decision-making.

Workplace: Italy or Europe (can be remote and/or hybrid)