AWS Solution Architect in Dallas, TX (Hybrid role)

Lead SRE observability workstream focusing on AWS-native monitoring solutions, migrating from third-party tools (Datadog/Splunk) to AWS CloudWatch ecosystem. Design and implement comprehensive observability architecture using CloudWatch Metrics V2, AWS AppSignals, AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry (ADOT), and AWS X-Ray. Establish enterprise-grade dashboards, alerting frameworks, and CloudFormation-based infrastructure automation for monitoring stack deployment.

Role Scope & Key Responsibilities

Primary Responsibilities:

•                     Observability Migration Leadership: Lead migration from Datadog/Splunk to AWS CloudWatch Metrics V2, ensuring feature parity, cost optimization, and minimal disruption to monitoring capabilities

•                     Deep Metrics Integration: Implement advanced CloudWatch metrics collection from ZeHorizon platforms, custom application metrics, and infrastructure telemetry with enhanced resolution and dimensionality

•                     Distributed Tracing & APM: Design and deploy AWS X-Ray distributed tracing architecture integrated with ADOT (AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry) for end-to-end application performance monitoring

•                     AppSignals Implementation: Configure AWS AppSignals for automatic service-level objective (SLO) tracking, anomaly detection, and application health monitoring

•                     Dashboard & Alerting: Create CloudWatch dashboards with cross-service correlation, CloudWatch Alarms with composite alarms, and EventBridge-based alert routing to incident management systems

•                     Infrastructure as Code: Develop CloudFormation templates (CFT) for repeatable observability stack deployment across multi-account/multi-region environments

•                     Cost Optimization: Optimize CloudWatch costs through metric filtering, log retention policies, and efficient query patterns while maintaining observability coverage

Key Deliverables:

•                     Migration runbooks from Datadog/Splunk to CloudWatch ecosystem

•                     ADOT Collector configurations for custom metrics and traces

•                     CloudWatch dashboard templates for application and infrastructure monitoring

•                     CloudFormation templates for observability stack automation

•                     Alert escalation policies and runbook automation

•                     Cost optimization recommendations and implementation

AWS Skills & Services (added)

Observability & Monitoring:

•                     Amazon CloudWatch: Expert-level proficiency in CloudWatch Metrics V2 (high-resolution metrics, metric math, anomaly detection), CloudWatch Logs (Logs Insights queries, subscription filters, metric filters), CloudWatch Alarms (composite alarms, alarm actions), and CloudWatch Dashboards (cross-account/cross-region dashboards, custom widgets)

•                     AWS X-Ray: Distributed tracing architecture, service maps, trace analysis, sampling rules, X-Ray SDK integration, and X-Ray daemon configuration

•                     AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry (ADOT): ADOT Collector deployment (ECS/EKS/EC2), OpenTelemetry SDK instrumentation, exporters configuration (CloudWatch, X-Ray, Prometheus), and custom metric pipelines

•                     AWS AppSignals: Service-level objective (SLO) configuration, automatic instrumentation, anomaly detection, and application health scoring

•                     Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus (AMP): Prometheus-compatible metrics collection, PromQL queries, and Grafana integration (if hybrid monitoring required)

•                     Amazon Managed Grafana (AMG): Dashboard creation, data source integration (CloudWatch, AMP, X-Ray), and role-based access control

Logging & Analytics:

•                     CloudWatch Logs Insights: Advanced query syntax, saved queries, query visualization, and log pattern analysis

•                     Amazon OpenSearch Service: Centralized log aggregation (if replacing Splunk), index management, and Kibana dashboards

•                     AWS CloudTrail: API activity monitoring, CloudTrail Insights for anomaly detection, and integration with CloudWatch Logs

Alerting & Incident Management:

•                     Amazon EventBridge: Event-driven alerting, custom event patterns, cross-account event routing, and integration with incident management tools (PagerDuty, Opsgenie)

•                     Amazon SNS: Multi-channel alert notifications (email, SMS, Lambda, SQS), topic subscriptions, and message filtering

•                     AWS Chatbot: Slack/Microsoft Teams integration for alert notifications and interactive runbook execution

Infrastructure as Code & Automation:

•                     AWS CloudFormation: StackSets for multi-account deployments, nested stacks, custom resources, and drift detection for observability infrastructure

•                     AWS CDK: Programmatic infrastructure definition for complex observability patterns

•                     AWS Systems Manager: Parameter Store for configuration management, Automation documents for remediation runbooks, and OpsCenter for incident tracking

 Container & Compute Monitoring:

•                     Amazon ECS/EKS: Container Insights, ADOT sidecar deployment, service mesh observability (AWS App Mesh), and pod-level metrics

•                     AWS Lambda: Lambda Insights, custom CloudWatch metrics from Lambda functions, and X-Ray tracing for serverless applications

•                     Amazon EC2: CloudWatch agent configuration, custom metrics publishing, and Systems Manager integration

Networking & Security:

•                     Amazon VPC: VPC Flow Logs analysis, network performance monitoring, and Transit Gateway metrics

•                     AWS Network Firewall: Firewall logs integration with CloudWatch, alert rules for security events

•                     AWS IAM: Fine-grained access control for CloudWatch resources, cross-account monitoring roles, and service-linked roles

•                     Cost Management:

•                     AWS Cost Explorer: CloudWatch cost analysis, usage patterns, and cost allocation tags

•                     AWS Budgets: Cost alerts for observability services, anomaly detection for unexpected spend

Migration & Integration:

•                     Datadog/Splunk Migration Patterns: Understanding of Datadog APM, metrics, and log forwarding to design equivalent CloudWatch solutions; Splunk HEC (HTTP Event Collector) to CloudWatch Logs migration strategies

Third-Party Integrations: Webhook integrations, API-based metric ingestion, and custom CloudWatch metric publishers

Financial Services & Industry Skills (added)

•                     Large regulated financial-services delivery with formal change-control, audit and risk governance

•                     Operational resilience expectations including RTO/RPO, multi-region DR and evidence for audit review

•                     Awareness of applicable controls and regulations such as DORA, NIST CSF 2.0, PCI DSS, SEC cyber rules, RegSCI and SIFMU/FMI expectations where relevant

•                     Ability to create Tech Risk-ready documentation including ADRs, runbooks, design docs, threat models and validation evidence

•                     Clear communication with client engineering, security, SRE, data and platform stakeholders as an embedded SME

Certifications / Qualifications

•                     AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate / Professional

•                     AWS Certified Developer - Associate

•                     AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional preferred