AWS Cloud Architect - eSC or eDV Clearance Required in Manchester

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. From day one you’ll work on meaningful, high‑profile programmes that stretch your skills and accelerate your growth. We invest heavily in you — supporting continuous learning, demand‑skills development, and long‑term career progression. You’ll thrive in a flexible, inclusive environment that values curiosity, encourages reinvention, and recognises what makes you unique.

We offer:

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

Your role and responsibilities

In this role, you’ll work in one of our IBM Consulting FutureNow Centers, delivering deep technical and industry expertise to a wide range of public and private sector clients around the world. Our delivery centres offer our clients locally based skills and technical expertise to drive innovation and adoption of new technology. We are seeking an AWS Cloud Architect to join IBM, supporting public sector and defence clients. This role suits a senior engineer or developer who is ready to move into a broader technical leadership position. You will lead the design and delivery of secure, scalable, and high‑performing cloud solutions, primarily on AWS, while also contributing to wider cloud and infrastructure architecture across complex environments. The ideal candidate is a hands‑on technologist with strong architectural thinking, experience in modern cloud‑native engineering, and a background working within Agile teams.

Responsibilities

• Lead the design of cloud architectures that emphasise scalability, security, performance, and operational excellence for public sector and defence clients.
• Translate business and technical requirements into clear solution designs and collaborate with stakeholders across engineering, product, and delivery.
• Provide technical leadership across full‑stack development, microservices, distributed systems, event‑driven patterns, and cloud‑native application design.
• Use AWS (and occasionally Azure) services to build secure, resilient, and cost‑efficient solutions.
• Apply AWS Well‑Architected Framework principles to ensure best‑practice implementation.
• Support application modernisation initiatives including containerisation, serverless adoption, refactoring, and cloud migration.
• Guide teams in CI/CD pipeline creation, automation practices, DevOps workflows, and infrastructure‑as‑code.
• Produce architecture diagrams, documentation, standards, and reusable design patterns.
• Work closely with developers, cloud engineers, product owners, and business leaders across Agile delivery teams.

Required education

None

Preferred education

Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise

• Cloud: Strong experience with AWS services across compute, storage, networking, APIs, serverless, and managed database offerings.
• Architecture: Skilled in designing microservices‑based systems, distributed architectures, and event‑driven or serverless patterns.
• Containerisation: Proficient with Kubernetes (EKS or AKS), Docker, and Helm for container orchestration and deployment.
• Infrastructure as Code: Hands‑on experience with Terraform, CloudFormation, Bicep, ARM templates, and Ansible for automated infrastructure provisioning.
• CI/CD: Practical knowledge of Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, AWS CodePipeline/CodeBuild, Jenkins, and Git‑based workflows.
• Databases: Familiarity with relational databases (Postgres, MySQL, SQL Server) and NoSQL platforms (DynamoDB or Cosmos DB), with optional exposure to graph or vector data stores.
• Monitoring & Observability: Experience with cloud‑native monitoring and logging systems such as CloudWatch or Azure Monitor, plus tools like Application Insights, Prometheus, and Grafana.
• Security & Governance: Strong understanding of IAM/RBAC, Key Vault/KMS, cloud security services, policy enforcement, and secrets management.

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).

Preferred technical and professional experience

• AWS Solutions Architect certification, ideally at the Professional or Expert level.
• DevOps‑focused certifications (AWS DevOps Engineer, Azure DevOps Engineer, or equivalent).
• Kubernetes certifications such as CKA, CKAD, or CKS.
• Terraform certification (Terraform Associate or higher).
• Enterprise architecture frameworks such as TOGAF or Zachman.
• Red Hat Certified Architect (beneficial but not essential).
• Security certifications such as CISSP, CCSP, Security+, or AWS Security Specialty.
• Cloud architecture and engineering specialties (AWS Advanced Networking, AWS Data Engineering, Azure Security Engineer, etc.).
• ITIL Foundation or higher (optional).

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

IBM wants you to bring your whole self to work and for you this might mean the ability to work flexibly. If you are interested in a flexible working pattern, please talk to our recruitment team to find out if this is possible in the current working environment.