Solutions Architect, Education & Research in Edinburgh

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is growing its team of Solutions Architects focused on Education and Research customers within the UK Public Sector. In this role, you will act as a trusted technical advisor, helping universities, research institutions, and other public sector organisations adopt cloud technologies that advance their missions. You will build executive-level technical relationships, serve as the voice of the customer back into AWS, and help these organisations see what is possible with cloud computing. As our Education and Research customer base expands, we need a Solutions Architect who is genuinely curious about emerging technology and motivated to translate that knowledge into practical, well-architected solutions. You will work alongside a supportive Public Sector team, partnering with sales, business development, and specialist teams to guide customers through their cloud journey — from early exploration through production workloads.

Key job responsibilities:

• Own the technical relationship with Education and Research customers, providing recommendations on architecture, security, cost optimisation, performance, reliability, and operational efficiency.
• Build and maintain executive-level technical relationships, understanding each customer's strategic priorities and proactively identifying opportunities where AWS can accelerate their goals.
• Advocate on behalf of customers internally by translating their feedback into technical requirements for AWS engineering teams and contributing to service improvements.
• Design cloud-native reference architectures and create technical content such as white papers, blog posts, code samples, and workshops to share best practices with customers and the broader Solutions Architect community.
• Collaborate with specialist teams across AWS to bring the right expertise into customer engagements and help customers explore new use cases, including generative AI and data analytics.

A day in the life:

You might start your morning reviewing a customer's architecture proposal, preparing recommendations that balance performance and cost. By midday, you could be leading a deep-dive session with a customer's engineering team, walking through design patterns for a migration or new workload. In the afternoon, you may join a peer design review with fellow Solutions Architects, share insights from a recent engagement, or contribute to a workshop you are building. You will regularly connect with specialists across AWS to bring the right expertise to each customer conversation.

About the team:

This role sits within our UK Public Sector team. The team has continued to grow, and we are proud to have welcomed people from different backgrounds who bring unique experiences to our work and to our customers. Our tenured Solutions Architects act as mentors and share their knowledge and experience across the group. We are all passionate about the impact we have on people across the UK, and we care deeply about our customers' missions. We enjoy working together in an environment that is supportive, inclusive, and fun. We respect that everyone has responsibilities and interests outside of work. Our roles afford the flexibility to do your best at work and at home.

Basic Qualifications:

• Experience within specific technology domain areas (e.g. software development, cloud computing, systems engineering, infrastructure, security, networking, data & analytics).
• Experience in design, implementation, or consulting in applications and infrastructures.
• Experience in IT development or implementation/consulting in the software or Internet industries.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience working with AWS technologies from a dev/ops perspective.