Principal AWS Cloud & Platform Architect
Location: London (hybrid)
Rate: £550 per day (Outside IR35)
Type: Contract, initial 3 months
The opportunity
A well-established cloud consultancy is looking for a Principal AWS Cloud & Platform Architect to join its senior technical leadership on an initial 3-month contract. You will shape and govern complex cloud, platform and application modernisation solutions, turning business outcomes into secure, scalable and cost-conscious architectures. You will lead technical discovery, define reference architectures and guide engineering teams from initial design through to delivery. AWS is the primary platform, and experience of other clouds is valued where it supports multi-cloud decisions, integration or migration planning.
What you will be doing
- Leading the architecture of complex AWS solutions, from discovery through high-level and detailed design
- Defining target-state, transition and migration architectures, including hybrid and multi-cloud integration
- Designing landing zones, shared platform services and cloud-native environments using Kubernetes, Amazon EKS and Docker
- Guiding application modernisation through microservices, APIs, event-driven patterns and serverless
- Setting infrastructure-as-code standards with Terraform and Helm, and architecting CI/CD and GitOps approaches
- Promoting platform engineering practices such as self-service capabilities, golden paths and automated policy enforcement
- Designing end-to-end observability using OpenTelemetry, CloudWatch, Grafana, Prometheus and the Elastic Stack
- Designing and governing AI gateway capabilities using LiteLLM, including model routing, policy controls and usage visibility
- Acting as a senior technical authority in client workshops, design reviews and governance forums
- Contributing to proposals, statements of work and estimates, and mentoring architects and engineers
What you will bring
- Substantial experience in senior cloud, platform, DevOps or infrastructure architecture roles, with accountability for complex enterprise designs
- Deep, practical AWS knowledge across networking, identity, security, compute, containers, storage, databases, integration and governance
- Strong Kubernetes and container platform experience, ideally including Amazon EKS
- Proven experience with Terraform, Helm, CI/CD pipelines and automated cloud provisioning
- Experience architecting observability across metrics, logs and distributed tracing, with working knowledge of OpenTelemetry
- Experience with model gateways or AI platform components; LiteLLM knowledge is highly desirable
- The ability to produce clear architecture documentation, decision records and standards
- Confident client-facing communication and workshop facilitation at senior stakeholder level
Desirable
- Azure, GCP or private cloud experience
- Serverless, event-driven and API-led architecture on AWS
- Internal developer platform or golden-path experience
- FinOps knowledge, including cost optimisation and showback/chargeback models
- Security-by-design, policy-as-code and software supply-chain controls
- Exposure to generative AI platforms, model governance and AI guardrails
- Consulting, pre-sales or bid support experience
- Certifications such as AWS Solutions Architect Professional, AWS Security Specialty or DevOps Engineer Professional, and CKA, CKAD or CKS. Equivalent practical experience is just as valued.
What makes a great fit
You are outcome-focused and pragmatic, balancing architectural quality against cost, timescales and risk. You provide clear direction while building trust across diverse teams, you explain complex topics simply, and you keep pace with developments in AWS, cloud-native and AI platforms.
Interested?
Contact Jack Harding at Nine Twenty on jharding@weareninetwenty.com for a confidential conversation.