Cloud Solution Architect

Job Overview

As a Cloud Solution Architect, you will be responsible for designing and overseeing the architecture of scalable, reliable, and secure technology platforms that support business applications and services in the cloud. You will work closely with engineering, operations, and product teams to define cloud and platform strategies, ensure seamless system integrations, and optimize performance across cloud and hybrid environments. Your role involves selecting the right tools, frameworks, and technologies to build a resilient and high-performing platform that meets business needs while maintaining security, compliance, and an operational infrastructure.

Strong communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and a deep understanding of modern software architecture are essential for success. Whether designing cloud-native applications, optimizing system performance, or ensuring security compliance, you will play a key role in shaping the technology strategy of the organization. As a team, we internationally coordinate our ambitions with the C-level, and we design, structure, and help our engineers to achieve these ambitions. The team consists of a group of architects that use their diverse technologies, backgrounds and corporate experiences to follow market developments and guide technology changes in a changing regulatory and competitive landscape for the mid to long term.

Key Responsibilities

• Your primary responsibility is to Architect and Design Solutions: Develop end-to-end technical solutions that align with business needs, industry best practices, and technology standards
• Focus on developing solutions in the areas of infrastructure, engineering, and observability in the cloud, designing scalable, secure, and cost-effective cloud architecture
• Developing long-term technology and hybrid cloud strategy, ensuring alignment with business goals and needs
• Architect platforms that are highly available, fault tolerant, and scalable for handling large transaction volume in an enterprise setting
• Ensure integration, operation and deployment of different services with a focus on Cloud resources, from DevOps pipelines, Key Vaults, Code Scanning tools, Security Monitoring, Observability Platforms, Enterprise Linux Environments, Data and data archival systems, Microservices, Web Application Firewalls, and various enterprise applications, APIs, and third-party services
• Keeping a close relation with different stakeholders such as product managers and influencing development priorities and direction.
• Lead in the creation of the documentation of features, solutions, technical initiatives, and product designs on a physical, logical, functional, and network level
• Be knowledgeable and keep up to date as a subject matter expert on the existing systems, system integrations, network, products, and services running within the ING ecosystem and within Azure
• Participate in the architectural boards of the bank to review and govern the architectural practices of the group
• Be in collaboration with teams for the implementation and development of your architectural designs, including the feedback loop of changes over the lifecycle of the development effort
• Adhere to all ING policies and complete all mandatory training requirements.

Key Capabilities/Experience

• Experience with deployment, maintenance, and operationalization of services and applications in the cloud.
• Experience working with Azure and/or GCP and the services they offer is required.
• Extensive experience in deploying resources and applications with a major cloud provider, including knowledge of different hosting options, compute, networking, databases, containerized workloads, and the like.
• Experience with cloud best practices like Cloud Policies, Infrastructure as Code deployments, IAM, monitoring, data protection, disaster recovery, business continuity, and compliance
• Experience in containerization and container orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes)
• Knowledge of industry standard Automation and DevOps methods (CICD Pipelines, IaC, etc.)
• Knowledge of RDBMS systems like Postgres or MS SQL and related technologies
• Knowledge of event-based or message-based systems like Kafka, or alternatives like RabbitMQ or AMQP
• Knowledge of architectural modeling, like C4, ArchiMate, UML, ERDs, etc.
• Knowledge of the entire Software Development Lifecycle and best practices relating thereof
• Knowledge of Infra Tooling like Linux OSes, Application Servers, hosting options, and the like

Minimum Qualifications

• Minimum of 5 years of experience in web or software development, minimum of 2 years as an architect role
• Communication Skills: an architect requires both formal and informal global coordination and communication skills amongst large groups of stakeholders. Professional communications skill and the ability to reason technically in English is required.
• Presentation and Documentation Skills: being an architect requires you to regularly communicate your designs to multiple stakeholders and the engineering community through documentation, white papers, and presentations for business and technical audiences alike
• Action-oriented, decisive approach to work required, with the willingness to take a hands-on role to ensure deliverables are met on time if needed, willing to take responsibility
• Outstanding analytical skills, people deeply curious and interested in technology
• Ability to work well within a Cross-Cultural team environment. Willingness for international travel and interaction with peers of multiple nationalities. Appreciation for multiple viewpoints, customs and diversity is a must.

Optional:

• Experience in migration of workloads to public cloud is a plus.
• Experience in Java-based enterprise systems, distributed systems, and microservice design and deployment patterns is a plus.
• Experience working with Regulatory, Compliance, and Policy matters regarding systems design and architecture is a plus, especially in a financial setting
• Experience in Banking/ FinTech space is an advantage