Cloud Architect

A cloud architect is the professional who designs an organization’s cloud ✕ "The cloud" refers to services and storage that run not on your device but on external servers on the internet. You can access them from anywhere. More in the glossary → strategy and infrastructure. They decide which services to use from providers like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud, and how to fit them together so that systems are scalable (able to grow with demand), secure, reliable and cost-efficient. They work at a high level: defining the overall architecture, setting best practices, planning migrations from on-premises servers to the cloud, and balancing performance against spending, since the cloud is pay-as-you-go. They need a broad grasp of infrastructure, networking, security and the business, plus deep knowledge of at least one major cloud platform. It is a senior, much sought-after role, and a key one as companies move their systems to the cloud.