Azure Cloud Architect

Veteran Firm Seeking an Azure Cloud Architect for an Onsite Assignment in Washington, DC

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My name is Stephen Hrutka, and I lead a Veteran-owned consulting firm in Washington, DC, focused on strategic sourcing, supply chain, and IT Staffing.

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We want to fill a Azure Cloud Architect role for the Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) in the DC Government.

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The ideal candidate is a DMV resident with 8+ years of infrastructure engineering experience, 5+ years designing and building in Microsoft Azure, and hands-on Terraform expertise, along with nice-to-have experience in AWS and Azure Virtual Desktop.

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If you’re interested, I'll gladly provide more details about the role and further discuss your qualifications.

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Thanks,

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Stephen M Hrutka

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Principal Consultant

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www.hruckus.com

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Executive Summary: HRUCKUS is looking for an experienced Azure Cloud Architect to lead the continued build-out of its multi-cloud environment, centered on Microsoft Azure with supporting AWS workloads, serving as the technical lead for OCTO's cloud team and the subject matter expert for cloud architecture across the DC government.

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Position Description: The architect designs secure, well-governed environments for OCTO and partner agencies, delivers infrastructure through code, plans and executes workload migrations, and provides architectural oversight for Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) deployments.

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Position Responsibilities:

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• Demonstrates expertise in conveying technical and functional concepts for cloud architecture, translating agency business requirements into clear solution designs, and presenting options, costs, and tradeoffs to technical and non-technical audiences.
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• Identifies improvements to project standards to achieve high quality services and products, including Infrastructure as Code practices, change management, and documentation standards for all cloud work.
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• Identifies best practices and standards for the use of Microsoft Azure, including the Azure Cloud Adoption Framework and Well-Architected Framework, landing zone design, naming and tagging, Azure Policy, and role-based access control (RBAC).
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• Delivers support and design for cloud technologies that require integration with on-premises systems and networks, including hybrid connectivity to OCTO data centers, hub-and-spoke networking, private endpoints, firewall integration, and identity integration with Microsoft Entra ID.
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• Interacts with executive level business users and technical experts, including agency CIOs, OCTO leadership, OCTO security, and vendor partners, to scope requirements, communicate status, and support decision-making.
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• Functions as the cloud architecture SME for OCTO, providing authoritative guidance on Azure services, security baselines, cost management, and AWS operations.
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• Leads large, complex cloud implementations, including assessment, design, and migration of on-premises virtualized workloads to Azure, from discovery and dependency mapping through target design, sizing, cost modeling, and migration waves.
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• Designs, matures, and owns the Azure landing zone, including management groups, subscriptions, policy, RBAC, and security baselines using Microsoft Defender for Cloud.
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• Ensures production changes are delivered through code and pull requests rather than manual portal changes.
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• Provides architectural oversight of Azure Virtual Desktop environments, including the boundary between Terraform-managed infrastructure and the Nerdio management platform.
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• Defines monitoring, backup, and disaster recovery standards for Azure workloads, and tracks and optimizes cloud spend to support agency chargeback reporting.
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• Supports existing AWS workloads at an operational level.
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• Provides technical direction, code review, and mentoring to the Azure Cloud Engineer, and ensures every critical system has a primary and backup owner.
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• Maintains current architecture diagrams, design decisions, and runbooks. Documentation is a reviewed deliverable.
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• Tracks work in Azure DevOps boards and incidents and changes in ServiceNow.
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Required Qualifications:

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• 8+ years in infrastructure engineering, with at least 5 years designing and building in Microsoft Azure.
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• Demonstrated design and delivery of an enterprise Azure landing zone, including management groups, Azure Policy, RBAC, and hub-and-spoke networking.
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• Hands-on Terraform experience in production, including reusable modules and remote state management.
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• Experience building infrastructure CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps (or GitHub Actions with transferable skills).
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• Strong knowledge of Microsoft Entra ID, conditional access, and identity governance.
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• Experience planning or leading migrations of on-premises virtualized workloads (VMware or similar) to Azure.
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• Working knowledge of AWS, sufficient to operate and troubleshoot existing workloads (EC2, VPC, IAM, S3).
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• Experience leading or mentoring engineers, including code review.
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• Strong written communication, with a track record of clear architecture documentation and runbooks.
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Minimum Education/ Certification Requirements: Bachelor’s degree in IT or related field or equivalent experience; Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) or ability to obtain within 6 months of start.

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The target annual salary is $121,072.00 - $129,720.00

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