Cloud Architect At International Committee of the Red Cross

What we do

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) works worldwide to provide humanitarian assistance to people affected by conflict and armed violence. We take action in response to emergencies and at the same time promote respect for international humanitarian law. We are an independent and neutral organization, and our mandate stems essentially from the Geneva Conventions of 1949. We work closely with National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and with their International Federation in order to ensure a concerted, rational and rapid humanitarian response to the needs of the victims of armed conflict or any other situation of internal violence. We direct and coordinate the international activities conducted in these situations.

Purpose of the position

The Cloud Architect is an important part of the Enterprise Architecture team whose role is to help business leaders enable their future-state business capabilities. The inputs provided by this team will help drive the programs, projects and initiatives investment choices with regards to the ICRC’s targeted business outcomes. This involves the practical application of existing, new and emerging technologies to new and evolving business and operating models.

The Cloud Architect is responsible for triggering cloud computing initiatives within the organization. The individual should provide thought leadership on implementing the defined cloud strategy and describe an architectural vision for cloud across the business and technical dimensions.

The successful candidate will build and evolve the cloud computing architecture that all businesses rely on in a flexible and agile method. The role also involves guiding the architectural aspects of cloud brokering and cloud governance across all aspects of ICT and the business.

Relationships

The Cloud Architect is required to collaborate with a wide variety of teams and people. The successful candidate should have the capability to work with senior-level ICT leaders, as well as have deep integration with other architects responsible for traditional ICT departments (such as network, security and application development) and with functional teams such as DPO, legal and sourcing.

The Cloud Architect will work closely with Project Managers, Solution Architects, Technical Architects and Platform Owners.

Main duties and responsibilities

As Cloud Architect, your main responsibilities will be to:

To provide thought leadership on how cloud computing can be used to enable digital transformation and build a platform for innovation, agility and application modernization. You will do this by influencing a change in behavior toward the adoption and consumption of cloud services in the hybrid multi-cloud architecture of the ICRC. This changed behavior will lead to a culture of adopting the right cloud services according to the defined cloud strategy of the institution;
Your work will be across disparate areas of the organization, including:
Application development;
Data and analytics;
External Cloud Services Providers;
Private cloud, infrastructure and operations;
Enterprise integration;
Security, data protection and compliance;
User experience.

As Cloud Architect, you do not dictate or implement all such changes but must build relationships and trust with the functional architects in each area to influence them toward making the vital changes.

Education and experience required

Master’s or Bachelor’s degree in business, computer science, computer engineering, electrical engineering, system analysis or a related field of study, or equivalent experience;
Extensive experience in cloud computing, from an architecture perspective;
Extensive development and solution integration experience;
Thorough understanding of agile principles and development methodologies and capability of supporting agile teams by providing advice and mentorship on opportunities, impact and risks;
Strong Agile and DevSecOps approach, experience in removing silos between infrastructures, application and business teams;
Minimum of 10 years of experience in technical or infrastructure architecture, network management, application development, middleware and cloud development;
Solid understanding of strategic and new and emerging cloud technology trends.

Desired profile and skills

Technical skills:

Application Architecture —Understanding of the layout of application deployment and design, including middleware options, protocols, API gateways and platform infrastructures (infrastructure as code, micro-services);
Automation and Orchestration —Streamlining repeatable processes and automating the execution of a complex process. This often requires a solid understanding of scripting, programming or API interaction;
Enterprise Integration — knowledge of the processes and architecture for integrating disparate services as for example on data, identity, infrastructure, API/service and provider integration;
Governance —Ensure the effective and efficient use of cloud computing to enable the ICRC to achieve its goals;
Infrastructure and Operations — Place focus on the people and processes associated with IT infrastructure (compute, storage and networking) and ICT Service Management processes needed to manage provisioning, capacity, performance and availability of services;
Security — Understanding of the technical security that protects the organization’s assets. As Cloud Architect, you should have knowledge of and experience with security policies, network security, data security and security event management to adopt cloud security services.

Desired profile and skills

Non-technical skills:

Strong Communication and Collaboration —Given the breadth of skill needed, you should be capable of finding trusted collaborators to achieve program goals;
Program Leadership and Delegation — Cloud adoption is a complex ICT and business program. Knowledge of and experience with leading a complex program is highly beneficial. To achieve the desired outcomes, you should be able to build a network of specialized colleagues and delegate tasks;
Leadership — We want a catalyst for change and a leader with a vision. As Cloud Architect, you should be able to resist the urge to execute “business as usual” and push the organization to incorporate cloud optimally;
Finance/Legal — There is no need to be a finance or legal specialist but you should have an understanding of the basics of ICT budgeting and ICT contracts and clauses such as indemnification, notification and limitation of liability;
Excellent command of English (written and spoken), French is a plus.

Additional information