Technical Architect - eSC/eDV Clearance in Cheltenham

At IBM Consulting UK FutureNow, you’ll build a career at the forefront of hybrid cloud and AI, working with leading clients across the public and private sectors. You’ll collaborate with top industry professionals, gain hands‑on experience with cutting‑edge technologies, and deliver solutions that create real business impact.

Benefits

• Tools and policies to support your work‑life balance: flexible working approaches, sabbatical programmes, paid paternity leave, maternity leave and an innovative maternity returners scheme.
• Traditional benefits: 25 days holiday (in addition to public holidays), private medical, dental & optical cover, online shopping discounts, an Employee Assistance Program, life assurance and a group pension plan through salary sacrifice.

Key Responsibilities

• Architect scalable, secure and high‑availability AWS solutions aligned to business needs.
• Design and configure EC2, S3, VPC, RDS, ELB/ALB and other core AWS services.
• Deploy, manage and optimise Kubernetes clusters via EKS.
• Monitor AWS environments, troubleshoot issues and ensure strong HA/DR readiness.
• Implement and enforce security standards, compliance controls and best practices.
• Optimise AWS spend through right‑sizing, usage analysis and cost‑effective design.
• Drive cloud migration assessments, designs and execution.
• Build and maintain automated infrastructure using Terraform or CloudFormation.
• Collaborate closely with development teams on deployment and integration of AWS solutions.
• Contribute to cloud team growth, including Nordcloud recruitment and technical evaluation of candidates.
• Promote DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines and modern automation approaches across delivery teams.
• Define and implement observability strategies (e.g. CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana).
• Provide technical leadership and governance through design reviews, architecture boards and best‑practice guidance.
• Support incident response, root‑cause analysis and continuous improvement across platform operations.

Required Education

None

Preferred Education

Bachelor's Degree

Required Technical and Professional Expertise

• Strong, hands‑on expertise with AWS services including EC2, S3, VPC, RDS and EKS.
• Experience with Terraform and infrastructure‑as‑code automation.
• Experience with Nordcloud recruitment or cloud‑focused hiring processes.
• Strong knowledge of Linux and VMware.
• Proven ability to design secure, scalable cloud architectures.
• Experience operating HA/DR configurations and troubleshooting AWS environments.
• Familiarity with DevOps practices and CI/CD workflows.
• Experience with cloud migration projects across assessment, design and execution.

Preferred Technical and Professional Experience

• Experience with multi‑account AWS environments and landing‑zone design (e.g. AWS Organizations, Control Tower).
• Exposure to observability and monitoring tooling (e.g. CloudWatch, Prometheus, Grafana, ELK stack).
• Experience designing or supporting container‑based application architectures beyond infrastructure (microservices, API‑driven systems).
• Familiarity with security tooling and identity models (IAM, Zero Trust principles, secrets management).
• Experience working within regulated or enterprise environments, including governance forums (e.g. TDA, design authority).

Pre‑employment Screening

This role is subject to pre‑employment screening in line with the UK Government’s Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS). An additional range of Personal Security Controls referred to as National Security Vetting (NVS) may apply, which could include meeting the eligibility requirements for The Security Check (SC) or Developed Vetting (DV).

Equal‑Opportunity Employer

IBM is proud to be an equal‑opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.