Job Summary/Purpose: The Operational Governance and Execution department is seeking a highly motivated and analytically driven individual with acute technical skills to help drive delivery on Operational Excellence initiatives. The initiatives are expected to drive business value of deployed IT solutions and will be deployed via project as well as Continuous Improvement initiatives. The OpEx Architect will engage in all IT SDLC activities as needed, including engagement with business and peer stakeholders to identify pain points, design optimal solutions and oversee implementation and deployment of these solutions. The OpEx Architect liaisons with business stakeholders via IT Service Delivery teams. This individual should be self-motivated, detail-oriented, and capable of working independently to develop observability solutions that enhance decision-making and system performance.

Job Duties/Responsibilities

Technology & Industry Acumen

• Demonstrate unique mastery of technology products and their applicability to Utility industry use cases.
• Utilize in-depth utility industry knowledge to capitalize on new technologies that facilitate digital transformation.
• Utilize exceptional knowledge and command of BU customer’s technical environment including key applications, workloads, tools, operational issues and concerns, etc to ensure BU is achieving optimal results.
• Identify and secure adoption of an acceptable product or solution trade-offs and risks to the customer (e.g., suggests possible risks and potential remediation based on previous experience.)
• Drive a continuous delivery environment by administering processes, standards, DevOps tools for version control, release management, automated testing and deployment.

Cloud and Operational Excellence Enablement

• Partner with cloud operations and engineering teams to optimize cost, performance, and reliability of workloads in AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• Lead root cause analyses, architecture retrospectives, and continuous improvement initiatives post-incident or after major releases.
• Develop and track operational KPIs and architecture scorecards—availability, latency, MTTR, automation coverage, and cost efficiency.
• Identify and implement automation opportunities (e.g., infrastructure as code, auto-remediation, CI/CD optimization) to reduce manual effort and risk.
• Advocate for observability and proactive monitoring practices across systems and applications.

Architecture Leadership

• Conduct technical and operational architecture reviews across cloud and on-prem environments to ensure compliance with operational excellence principles.
• Define and maintain architecture standards, reference architectures, and governance models that promote reliability, cost efficiency, and security.
• Provide subject matter expertise in cloud architecture — including compute, storage, networking, automation, and observability.
• Guide solution architects and engineering teams in designing cloud-native and hybrid architectures that are scalable, resilient, and easy to operate.
• Integrate operational excellence frameworks (e.g., AWS Well-Architected Framework, FinOps, DevOps, and SRE practices) into the architecture lifecycle.

Governance and Collaboration – EA

• Serve as a core member of the Cloud Technical Advisory Board to ensure consistent adherence to enterprise standards.
• Collaborate with product, operations, and security teams to align architecture design with business objectives and compliance requirements.
• Influence leadership and peers through clear, data-backed recommendations and business cases for technical and operational decisions.
• Partner with finance and platform teams to drive cloud cost optimization and sustainability initiatives.

Thought Leadership

• Champion a culture of operational excellence, accountability, and technical rigor.
• Mentor architects and engineers on cloud design principles, operational best practices, and systems thinking.
• Evaluate emerging cloud technologies and architectural trends to continuously enhance the enterprise technology roadmap.
• Contribute to enterprise modernization efforts — enabling agility, scalability, and improved reliability through cloud and automation.

Minimum Requirements:

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related discipline (Master’s preferred).
• 10+ years of experience in IT architecture, infrastructure, or software engineering, including 5+ years in cloud architecture (AWS, Azure, or GCP).
• Strong understanding of enterprise architecture frameworks (e.g., TOGAF) and cloud operational models.
• Proven ability to analyze complex systems, identify optimization opportunities, and drive measurable improvements.
• Demonstrated success in influencing technical and business stakeholders through structured, data-driven analysis.
• Excellent communication, interpersonal, and presentation skills — able to simplify complex topics for diverse audiences.

Preferred:

• Certifications such as AWS Solutions Architect Professional, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, TOGAF, ITIL, or Lean/Six Sigma.
• Hands-on experience with IaC (Terraform, CloudFormation), CI/CD, and observability tools (CloudWatch, Prometheus, Datadog, Splunk, etc.).
• Knowledge of FinOps principles, SRE/DevOps methodologies, and ITSM/ITOM practices.
• Experience designing for multi-cloud, hybrid, and containerized environments (Kubernetes, EKS, AKS, GKE).