Lead Cloud Architect

C5MI is not your typical consulting firm. We are a high-performance team of SAP and supply chain experts who solve complex, mission critical challenges for organizations that cannot afford failure.

We hire consultants who thrive in complexity, move fast, take ownership, and deliver under pressure. At C5MI, you will not be siloed or stuck in theory. You will be hands on, client facing, and directly influencing outcomes that matter.

Our culture rewards initiative, accountability, and continuous growth. This is a place where your expertise is valued, your work is meaningful, and your performance truly matters. If you’re energized by learning through real-world challenges, collaborating with top-tier talent, and expanding your capabilities every day, C5MI is where strong consultants level up.

The Lead Cloud Architect owns the hosting, infrastructure, and platform architecture for a large-scale, greenfield SAP S/4HANA financial management modernization program for a Department of War (DoW) organization, accountable for a deployment posture that satisfies federal cloud security requirements and sustains continuous authorization throughout the program lifecycle. This position leads the cloud and platform engineering team, designing the accredited hosting environment, the connection and integration approach to the customer’s enterprise cloud, the environment landscape supporting concurrent process area delivery, and the resilience posture required for operation in degraded network conditions. The Lead Cloud Architect partners closely with security, risk management framework, and platform operations leadership to ensure every component of the solution is authorizable, hardened, monitored, and recoverable.

Note: This position is contingent upon contract award.

Essential Functions and Responsibilities:

Owns the end-to-end cloud and infrastructure architecture for the program, including the accredited hosting environment, network topology, connectivity and boundary approach, and integration to the customer’s enterprise cloud environment.

Leads and develops the cloud and platform engineering team; allocates work, manages delivery quality, and owns team performance, staffing, and capability development.

Designs the environment landscape supporting development, test, staging, training, and production, including sizing, refresh strategy, and capacity planning for concurrent process area delivery.

Ensures the hosting posture meets applicable federal cloud security requirements, including FedRAMP authorization levels and DoD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide impact levels.

Partners with risk management framework and security personnel to produce authorization artifacts, support control implementation and assessment, maintain the plan of action and milestones, and sustain the authority to operate through change.

Defines and enforces infrastructure hardening standards, including security technical implementation guide compliance, baseline configuration management, vulnerability scanning, and patch management.

Designs the identity, credential, and access management integration approach, including federation, multifactor authentication, and privileged access management for platform administration.

Establishes infrastructure-as-code, automation, and configuration management practices to ensure environments are reproducible, auditable, and consistently configured.

Designs the resilience, backup, high availability, and disaster recovery architecture, including operation and synchronization under denied, degraded, intermittent, and limited-bandwidth conditions.

Defines the containerization, orchestration, and portability approach for extensibility and integration services, ensuring compliance with container hardening standards.

Owns platform monitoring, logging, and observability architecture, including audit log retention and protection sufficient to support financial audit and inspector general examination.

Presents and defends the hosting and infrastructure architecture at program milestone gate reviews and in government security and architecture working groups.

Advises program leadership on hosting cost drivers, licensing and consumption models, and the technical and schedule implications of hosting decisions.

Ability to travel up to 50% to client sites, varying based on client program schedules.

Adheres to all certified processes as part of our commitment to maintaining the highest standards of quality and information security, which includes actively participating in quality assurance activities and ensuring the protection of sensitive information in accordance with our security policies.

Performs other related tasks as assigned by direct supervisor.

Essential People Leader Functions:

People Management & Performance Accountability: Sets performance expectations; provides ongoing coaching, feedback, and recognition; conducts goal-setting, evaluations, and development planning; and addresses performance, conduct, and attendance issues in a timely, compliant manner.

Employee Development & Capability Building: Develops employees through coaching, mentoring, training, and stretch assignments; identifies skill gaps and development needs; and supports succession planning and talent pipeline readiness within scope.

Engagement, Culture & Team Effectiveness: Fosters an inclusive, respectful, high-performing environment; promotes accountability and collaboration; and reinforces company values, behavioral expectations, and professional standards.

Workforce Planning & Resource Oversight: Plans, assigns, and prioritizes work to meet delivery, quality, and timeline goals; manages workloads and staffing within approved parameters; and escalates resource risks or constraints as needed.

Policy, Compliance & Risk Management: Applies company policies and employment practices consistently; partners with HR on employee relations matters; and identifies and mitigates people, delivery, and compliance risks.

Communication & Stakeholder Alignment: Communicates expectations, decisions, and changes clearly; aligns team or organizational objectives with business priorities; and collaborates effectively across matrixed, cross-functional, or client environments.

C5MI Expectations of all Employees:

Adheres to all C5MI Policies and Procedures.

Always conducts self in a manner consistent with C5MIs’ Core Values.

Maintains a positive and respectful attitude with all contacts.

Consistently reports to work on time and prepared to perform the duties of the position.

Meets productivity standards and performs duties as workload necessitates.

Maintains the privacy of all company proprietary information.

Treats vendors, customers, and team members with respect and dignity.

Able to safely perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation.

Minimum Qualifications:

Bachelor’s degree in a related field or equivalent experience; 8-12 years of relevant experience and 3-5 years of people leadership experience with a Bachelor’s degree, or 10-14 years of relevant experience and 5-8 years of people leadership experience without a degree. Advanced certifications valued.

8+ years of cloud or enterprise infrastructure architecture experience, including 5+ years focused on a major public cloud platform.

Demonstrated experience designing and delivering workloads in a government cloud environment, including Azure Government, AWS GovCloud, or an equivalent accredited enclave.

Working knowledge of FedRAMP authorization, the DoD Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide, and Impact Level 4 and 5 hosting requirements.

Experience supporting the risk management framework authorization process, including control implementation, artifact production, and continuous monitoring.

Demonstrated experience with infrastructure-as-code, automation, and CI/CD t