Cloud Architect

The Cloud Architect (RHEL & Hybrid Cloud Specialist) is a senior-level technical leadership role designed for a visionary engineer who excels at the intersection of enterprise Linux stability and modern cloud agility. As organizations in 2026 increasingly move toward sophisticated hybrid-cloud models to balance performance, cost, and data sovereignty, this role serves as the primary architect and governor of our foundational technology stacks.

Cloud Architect (RHEL & Hybrid Cloud Specialist)

Remote

Minimum 5+ years in Cloud Architecture or Senior Systems Engineering

Portuguese and English

RHEL, Ansible, Kubernetes, Hybrid Cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP)

The core mission of the Cloud Architect is to design, implement, and govern a world-class hybrid-cloud infrastructure that prioritizes the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) ecosystem as its operational backbone. In the current landscape, where financial and technological sectors demand extreme reliability and automated scalability, this role is responsible for ensuring that our infrastructure is not just a collection of servers, but a cohesive, self-healing platform.

By treating infrastructure as code (IaC) and leveraging high-level automation via Ansible, the Cloud Architect will bridge the gap between legacy virtualization (KVM/VMware) and public cloud hyperscalers. The incumbent is expected to move the organization away from manual interventions toward an autonomous, policy-driven environment that supports rapid product iterations without compromising security or performance.

Strategic Importance:

In 2026, Cloud Architecture is defined by the ability to manage complexity through automation. This role is pivotal in reducing "Toil" across engineering teams, optimizing cloud spend through intelligent resource orchestration, and maintaining compliance with data privacy regulations through strict RHEL-based security hardening.

The successful candidate will be evaluated on their ability to achieve the following high-level objectives:

Cloud Adoption maturity

Transition from siloed infrastructure to a unified hybrid-cloud model.

Automation coverage

Reduction of manual deployment errors by >90% through Ansible.

System Resiliency

Achieving 99.99% uptime for RHEL-based core services.

The successful candidate must possess a deep and diverse technical background, combining traditional systems engineering excellence with modern cloud-native architectural patterns. This role requires the ability to navigate the entire stack, from low-level kernel tuning to high-level cloud service orchestration.

As the foundational operating system for our hybrid-cloud strategy, expert-level knowledge of the RHEL ecosystem is mandatory. The architect must demonstrate:

Architectural experience with AWS (VPC, EC2, Transit Gateway, IAM), Azure (VNets, ExpressRoute, Entra ID), or GCP (Shared VPC, Cloud IAM). Must understand cloud-native networking and security primitives.

Hands-on experience with KVM/Libvirt for open-source virtualization and VMware vSphere (ESXi/vCenter) for enterprise-grade on-premise infrastructure.

Deep understanding of Docker/Podman container runtimes and Kubernetes (K8s) architecture. Specific experience with Red Hat OpenShift is a significant advantage.

Experience in designing and maintaining enterprise-scale CI/CD pipelines is critical for modern delivery cycles:

While we value hands-on experience and a proven track record, the following qualifications are considered highly advantageous in our evaluation process:

Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field.

In our matrixed organization, the Cloud Architect often leads cross-functional DevOps and Infrastructure squads. You must demonstrate the ability to drive technical adoption, enforce RHEL standards, and steer teams toward best practices using technical credibility, empathy, and negotiation skills rather than formal management power.

We are looking for an architect who is not content with simply fixing a symptom but is driven to find the root cause of systemic inefficiencies.

Ability to synthesize data from multiple sources (logs, cloud metrics, financial reports) to identify performance or cost bottlenecks.

A proactive "detective" mindset that seeks out technical debt and designs structured plans to pay it down before it impacts stability.

Resilience and methodical thinking during high-pressure troubleshooting scenarios.

Technology at this scale is a significant investment. The Cloud Architect must understand the business behind the bytes:

Understanding Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) when comparing RHEL on-premise vs. public cloud services.

Aligning infrastructure scaling policies with business growth cycles and seasonal peaks.

Identifying opportunities for technology to provide a competitive advantage, such as faster time-to-market through automated CI/CD pipelines.

Conflict Resolution

Mediates technical disagreements between Dev and Ops teams to reach a stable consensus.

Mentorship

Actively uplifts junior and mid-level engineers through code reviews and design feedback.

Adaptability

Remains open to new methodologies and shifts in cloud provider strategies without rigid adherence to legacy patterns.

The Cloud Architect operates within the Group Enterprise Architecture division. This positioning ensures that infrastructure decisions are made with a holistic view of the company's long-term digital transformation goals.

Partnering to implement automated RHEL provisioning workflows and Ansible-based configuration management. Ensuring Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) standards are strictly followed.

Collaborating on system observability, defining Service Level Objectives (SLOs), and architecting self-healing mechanisms within the RHEL environment to minimize manual intervention.

Working closely to ensure SELinux policies, kernel hardening, and cloud IAM frameworks meet enterprise security standards and local POPIA regulatory requirements.

Translating product feature requirements into infrastructure capacity plans. Advising on the feasibility and cost-implications of new technical initiatives.

Managing technical relationships with Red Hat and hyperscalers (AWS/Azure/GCP) to escalate complex issues and influence product roadmaps in favor of the organizations needs.

While the Cloud Architect focuses on high-level strategy, they are expected to remain "plugged into" the engineering squads. This is achieved through:

Participation in Agile Ceremonies: Attending sprint planning and retrospectives for core infrastructure squads to provide real-time architectural guidance.

Cross-Skilling Initiatives: Leading internal "Communities of Practice" focused on Linux excellence and automation to uplift the skills of junior and mid-level administrators.

Incident Escalation: Acting as the Level 4 architectural escalation point for complex, systemic outages that require deep-level RHEL or cloud networking expertise.

Given the remote nature of the role in the 2026 global market, the Architect must be proficient in asynchronous collaboration. This includes leveraging digital whiteboarding tools, Slack/Teams for rapid coordination, and robust documentation in Confluence or similar knowledge-sharing platforms to ensure that architectural alignment is maintained across distributed time zones and regions.