Cloud Architect

Why do you need to choose between doing important work and having a fulfilling life? At Ardent, we have both. Ardent employees are committed to solving our customers’ most difficult problems—and we are committed to the well-being, personal goals, and professional development of our employee. We are “All In.” We put forth our strongest effort possible to get the mission accomplished and we do it together. We respect the skills and experience you bring to the Ardent team. And we provide a rewarding environment to help you succeed. 

We offer highly competitive benefits, professional development opportunities, and an exceptional culture that embraces flexibility, innovation, collaboration, and career growth. A collective service mindset underpin our work, and a shared camaraderie to serve clients, colleagues and our communities set us apart. Our full commitment to being "All In" for our employees and our clients is not just our approach, it is our standard. If this sounds like the perfect fit for you, choose Ardent and make a difference with us. 

Ardent is seeking a Cloud Architect to join our team.  

This is an onsite position located in Tysons, VA. Remote work is subject to the discretion/needs of the customer.

Ardent is seeking an experienced Cloud Architect to lead the engineering tasks and manage cloud environments for the government program. The Cloud Architect will be responsible for executing strategies for DevOpsSec pipeline adoption and implementation, enhancing performance monitoring, and establishing standards for configuration management, cloud resource usage, and migration between environments. This role will oversee the creation and management of cloud environments, ensuring cost-effective and efficient operations across AWS platforms, including FedRAMP GovCloud.

Responsibilities and Duties:

• Design and implement cloud-based AWS solutions to support client applications and services.
• Lead the adoption and development of DevOpsSec pipelines, ensuring secure and efficient deployment.
• Develop and enforce Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for cloud configuration management, including user access, server creation, and retirement.
• Forecast cloud resource usage, implement billing strategies, and monitor usage to optimize costs.
• Manage and execute the migration of applications from AWS Commercial Cloud to FedRAMP-approved GovCloud.
• Collaborate with development and operations teams to ensure effective system design and network architecture.
• Implement technical solutions compliant with FISMA and NIST security standards.
• Design and maintain logical and network diagrams to support cloud architecture.
• Oversee performance monitoring and optimization using tools like DataDog, AppDynamics, or NewRelic.
• Ensure cloud environments are scalable, reliable, and optimized for disaster recovery and failover capabilities.

Requirements: 

• Bachelor’s degree with 8+ years of relevant experience in an Enterprise IT environment, OR 10+ years of relevant experience without a Bachelor’s degree.
• Technical proficiency in designing and implementing AWS cloud solutions.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional or AWS Certified DevOps Engineer Professional.
• Experience with cloud-based hosting, backup, and recovery, including failover zones.
• Experience with DevOpsSec pipeline tools such as configuration management, automated testing, blue-green deployments, and branching strategies.
• Proven ability to optimize system performance and resource utilization.
• Experience with network communication protocols, ports, routing, proxy settings, and firewall policies.
• Experience migrating applications from AWS Commercial Cloud to FedRAMP GovCloud. 
• Proficiency in using Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools such as DataDog, AppDynamics, or NewRelic.
• Experience with microservices/container architectures (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes, OpenShift).
• Experience designing solutions compliant with FISMA and NIST security standards.
• Familiarity with cloud cost optimization, billing management, and accounting best practices.
• Experience with database management (e.g., MongoDB, Oracle).

Due to the nature of the work we support, all candidates in consideration for this role must be willing to undergo the government-issued background investigation process.

Ardent is an equal-opportunity employer. We will not discriminate and will take affirmative action measures to ensure against discrimination in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the basis of race, color, gender, national origin, age, religion, creed, disability, veteran's status, sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.