Principal Consultant
20 hours ago
London
Principal Cloud Architect (AWS) - Outside IR35 12 months+, Fully Remote (UK only) The Role Our client is looking for a Principal-level architect with a strong consultancy background and deep financial services experience to provide technical leadership and architectural oversight across a complex AWS estate. You will act as the senior technical authority across multiple workstreams, ensuring architectural integrity, quality, and alignment to agreed standards. You will: • Provide technical authority and oversight across delivery, ensuring solutions align with agreed architecture, standards, and best practice, • Validate key technical decisions, designs, and outputs, holding accountability for quality and fitness-for-purpose, • Guide teams through complex or high-risk areas, offering direction and constructive challenge to de-risk outcomes, • Ensure consistency and reuse across the organisation, avoiding fragmentation and reinforcing standard approaches, • Act as an escalation point for technical risks, issues, and trade-offs, supporting informed decision-making, • Balance pragmatism with engineering rigour, ensuring solutions are both deliverable and sustainable, • Work closely with delivery leads and senior customer stakeholders to maintain confidence in the technical direction and overall integrity of the solution Required Experience & Skills AWS & Cloud Architecture (Essential) • Deep knowledge of AWS Cloud and enterprise-scale architecture, • AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional (mandatory), • Strong experience designing hybrid and multi-account AWS architectures, • EC2, • Load Balancing, • Networking (VPCs, VPC Lattice preferred), • WAF, • IAM, • RDS and Aurora, • AppStream 2.0 / Amazon WorkSpaces, • EFS, • S3, • Lambda, • DMS, • AWS Security Tooling (e.g. Config), • SSM, • CloudWatch, • EKS, ECS, • API Gateway, • Direct Connect, • SQS, SNS, SES, • Route 53, • Secrets Manager, • Deep expertise in Terraform / OpenTofu and Terragrunt, • Strong background operating within Agile delivery environments, • Experience leading and guiding engineers within Agile programmes, • Proven ability to design and present High-Level Designs (HLDs) and Low-Level Designs (LLDs) for formal sign-off Desirable Experience • Azure DevOps, • Oracle and PostgreSQL migrations into AWS, • Draw.io (or equivalent architecture tooling) Profile Sought • Principal-level architect with consultancy pedigree, • Strong stakeholder management and executive communication skills, • Comfortable providing challenge at senior levels while maintaining trust, • Experienced operating as the accountable technical authority across complex programmes, • Able to combine strategic thinking with practical delivery awareness This opportunity would suit a seasoned AWS Principal Architect looking for a long-term, outside IR35 engagement where they can provide strategic technical leadership within a regulated financial services environment. Apply now online - this is an urgent role requiring an immediate starter.