Cloud Solution Architect

Why AIS?

When you join AIS, you’re joining a mission-driven team that’s passionate about making a difference. You’ll work on projects that matter, alongside industry-leading experts, in an environment that fosters innovation, driving client success, and empowering our team to make a lasting impact. As an employee-owned company, we value collaboration, inclusivity, continuous growth, and shared success.

• Employee Ownership: Your contributions directly impact the company’s success, and you share in its achievements.

• Continuous Learning: Access to resources, training, and mentorship to support your professional growth.

• Inclusive Culture: A workplace where diversity is celebrated, and everyone’s voice is valued.

• Mission-Driven Work: Engage in projects that make a meaningful difference for our clients and communities.

What are we looking for?

At AIS, we're looking for more than just skills - we're looking for driven individuals who are passionate about making a difference, eager to grow, and aligned with our core principles.

What you will be doing?

This position is contingent upon contract award. We are currently pursuing a proposal and are seeking qualified candidates to include in our submission and identify candidates for future hiring needs on the program once awarded.

• Core Knowledge & Skills: Architects scalable, resilient solutions; authors roadmaps and blueprints; integrates diverse components; advances automation (PowerShell/Python/Ansible) and governance/policy.

• Work & Complexity: Leads architectural initiatives, establishes performance benchmarks, integrates systems at scale, researches emerging tech, and mitigates enterprise risk.

• Quality & Independence: Ensures integrity, scalability, and cost/performance optimization; produces comprehensive design artifacts; sets and enforces standards with broad autonomy.

• Teamwork & Communication: Leads architectural teams, builds strategic partnerships, institutionalizes knowledge management, and communicates designs and executive‑ready reports.

• Consulting & Engagement: Delivers architectural consulting aligned to business strategy, proposes enterprise technologies, nurtures vendor alliances, and seeds new project opportunities.

Cloud Solution Architect – 100% Remote Position (U.S. based)

AIS has an immediate need for a Cloud Solution Architect for a long-term project supporting our client, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Office of the Chief Information Office (OCIO), in achieving the goals stated in the Secretary’s Strategic Plan to develop commercial cloud services across the government. AIS will be supporting the Digital Information Service Center (DISC) with the execution of cloud capabilities.

This is a 100% remote position; however, you must be a U.S. citizen (no dual citizenships, Green cards or H1-Bs) based in the U.S. and able to obtain a Federal Government Security Clearance, and be willing and able to work core business hours 8 AM – 5 PM (Eastern) M-F.

This is a proposal-based position; employment is contingent upon contract award and funding availability.

Primary Responsibilities

The successful candidate will be part of a cross-functional team and will possess strong analytic experience, solid data technical skills and excellent communication skills to support cloud planning and implementation functions across an enterprise-wide cloud services program.

Our team is creating cloud capabilities across the USDA and for other government clients. As a cloud solution architect, we need you to create cloud-based technical architectures and cost estimates that meet customer requirements and take advantage of cloud capabilities.

You will work with federal agency customers to determine procurement options, analyze solution options and plan cloud migration requirements and activities. We aim for high-touch, transparent, standards-based and compliance solutions for our customers. Our program includes projects that vary from engagement to engagement as we research current environments to propose new technical solutions and architectures. Our solutions include both large- and small-application portfolios with a goal to design with DevSecOps paradigms in mind.

Example activities include:

· Conduct IT services architecture planning and engineering necessary to design and deploy USDA enterprise IT solutions

· Assess and document the alignment of USDA, DISC and client applications/services to USDA/agency programs

· Work cross-functionally across customer and DISC groups to identify impacts in processes and business value for enterprise approaches, developing implementation plans and success objectives.

· Develop baseline analyses of IT system and infrastructure requirements, demand, and total cost associated with enterprise IT commodities and services (including but not limited to networks, data centers, and applications)

· Develop IT solution alternative analyses and business cases; and

· Conduct IT services architecture planning and engineering necessary to design and deploy USDA enterprise IT solutions

· Assess and document the alignment of USDA, DISC and client applications/services to USDA/agency programs

· Work cross-functionally across customer and DISC groups to identify impacts in processes and business value for enterprise approaches, developing implementation plans and success objectives.

Requirements

· Experience designing, implementing and operating Federal cloud ecosystems in MS Azure and/or AWS a must; Google Cloud and Oracle Cloud a plus

· 10+ years of experience with cloud architecture design/support

· Experience working in and analyzing cloud-based environments

· Experience migrating environments, applications and workloads to the cloud

· Knowledge of managing operations for cloud or SaaS environments

· Ability to develop cloud technical operational procedures and manage team execution of procedures

· Hands-on experience in designing, developing and the implementation of architectural and data deliverables in an enterprise cloud environment for a large-scale Federal government agency (USDA experience is a plus)

· Hands-on experience leading a team to optimize cloud platform architectures and calculate, monitor and optimize spend

· Experience providing architecture and strategic guidance for data cloud applications

· Ability to analyze processes, gaps, resolutions, and share lessons learned

Preferred Qualifications

· Good working knowledge of and experience with FISMA and implementing Fed RAMP standards and compliance requirements (NIST)

• Experience with Serverless, including Lambda, API Gateway, Step Functions, and SAM
• Experience with application management and providing high availability and resilient solutions using methods, including clustering or failover
• Experience with an Agile release methodology
• Experience working in highly automated DevOps cloud environments with complex CI/CD deployment pipelines leveraging IaC templates such as Terraform
• Expert working knowledge of the Microsoft Office product suites
• Experience with cloud operations and management best practices for optimized, cost-effective cloud deployments
• Good interpersonal skills including the ability to collaborate effectively, combined with excellent written and oral communication skills in English
• Bachelor’s degree in computer science, information technology or related discipline

U.S. Citizenship required

Must be able to obtain a Federal Government Clearance

Must reside in the U.S.

Must be willing and able to work 8-5 AM Eastern M-F

Applied Information Sciences does not discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, religion, color, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, protected veteran status, or any other basis. Employment decisions are based solely on qualifications, merit, and business needs.