Principal IT Architect - Cloud & Infrastructure

The Principal IT Architect serves as inDirectIT’s senior technical authority and is responsible for the architecture, design, and technical direction of complex customer environments and projects. This position provides technical leadership across the company’s engineering and service delivery functions, with particular emphasis on Microsoft and AWS cloud technologies, cybersecurity, regulated environments, and infrastructure modernization.

The Principal IT Architect will work closely with company leadership, engineering staff, project teams, and customers to translate business, technical, security, and compliance requirements into practical and supportable solutions.

This is inDirectIT’s most senior engineering position and is deliberately hands-on. Beyond setting standards and reviewing the work of others, the Principal IT Architect is expected to personally lead the company’s most complex migrations, tenant transformations, and break/fix escalations. Building reference architectures, performing hands-on configurations, and directly resolving the technical problems that other engineers cannot. Establishing standards and mentoring the broader engineering team is part of the role, but it does not substitute for remaining the company’s most capable hands-on engineer.

Reporting & Supervisory Scope

This position reports directly to the Chief Operating Officer (COO).

The Principal IT Architect has no direct reports at this time and does not have management authority over other employees, but as the company grows this scope may change.

Within individual tasks, projects, and engagements, the Principal IT Architect does supervise the technical execution: delegating work to other engineers, providing technical guidance and direction, and setting task and project-level priorities. Overall resource management and cross-project prioritization (i.e., determining which project takes precedence over another) remains the responsibility of the COO.

Key Responsibilities

Technical Leadership & Architecture

• Serve as the senior technical authority for inDirectIT’s customer environments, engineering initiatives, and complex technical decisions.

• Design and oversee secure, scalable, reliable, and supportable technology solutions across cloud, hybrid, and on-premises environments.

• Establish architectural standards, reference designs, technical best practices, and implementation patterns for use across customer environments.

• Review proposed architectures and major technical changes to identify risks, dependencies, security considerations, and operational impacts before implementation.

• Evaluate new technologies, platforms, and services and provide recommendations regarding their adoption within the company’s technology stack.

• Balance technical best practices with customer requirements, cost, operational complexity, security, and long-term supportability.

Microsoft Cloud & Infrastructure

Provide senior-level, hands-on architecture and engineering expertise across technologies including:

• Microsoft Azure and Azure Government

• Microsoft 365 Commercial, GCC, and GCC High

• Microsoft Entra ID and hybrid identity

• Microsoft Intune and endpoint management

• Azure Virtual Desktop and related virtual desktop technologies

• Windows Server and Active Directory

• Azure networking, VPNs, firewalls, and hybrid connectivity

• Virtualization, storage, backup, and disaster recovery

• Cloud and on-premises workload migrations

• Microsoft security and identity technologies

The Principal IT Architect will personally lead or perform hands-on work on complex migrations, tenant transformations, infrastructure modernization efforts, cloud adoption initiatives, and other high-impact customer projects - including projects spanning both Microsoft 365 GCC and GCC High environments, depending on the customer and project requirements.

Security & Regulated Environments

• Design solutions for customers operating within regulated and security-sensitive environments, including organizations supporting the U.S. Defense Industrial Base.

• Incorporate security and compliance requirements into infrastructure and cloud architecture from the beginning of the solution-design process.

• Provide technical guidance related to CMMC, NIST SP 800-171, DFARS, CUI environments, FedRAMP-authorized services, and other applicable customer requirements across both GCC and GCC High environments as required by the customer’s regulatory posture.

• Work with security and compliance resources to translate requirements into appropriate technical controls and architectures.

• Design and review identity, access, segmentation, encryption, logging, monitoring, backup, and data-protection architectures.

• Assist in defining secure technical boundaries and reducing unnecessary exposure of regulated or sensitive information.

The Principal IT Architect is not expected to independently serve as the organization’s compliance authority; rather, the position is responsible for ensuring that technical architecture appropriately supports defined security and compliance requirements.

Projects & Complex Engineering

• Provide architecture and technical leadership for major customer projects from discovery through implementation and transition to ongoing support.

• Participate in technical discovery and assess existing customer environments, dependencies, risks, and requirements.

• Develop solution architectures, migration strategies, implementation approaches, and technical scopes.

• Establish technical requirements and assist project teams in estimating engineering effort and identifying dependencies.

• Lead or directly participate in complex implementations when appropriate.

• Perform technical reviews at critical project milestones and validate that implemented solutions align with the intended architecture.

• Ensure completed projects can be effectively transitioned to and supported by the managed services team.

• Serve as a senior escalation resource when complex technical issues require architecture-level troubleshooting or decision-making.

Engineering Standards & Mentorship

• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to systems engineers, administrators, security personnel, and other technical staff.

• Help engineers develop deeper expertise in cloud, infrastructure, identity, networking, security, and architecture.

• Establish repeatable engineering practices and reduce unnecessary one-off solutions across customer environments.

• Review complex changes, designs, scripts, configurations, and implementation plans when appropriate.

• Assist technical teams in troubleshooting complex or cross-platform problems.

• Identify technical knowledge gaps and recommend training, documentation, or process improvements.

• Promote documentation and knowledge transfer so that critical technical knowledge is shared across the organization rather than concentrated with individual engineers.

Customer Technical Strategy

• Serve as a trusted senior technical resource for key customers and customer IT leadership.

• Participate in technical strategy discussions with CIOs, CTOs, IT managers, security personnel, and other customer stakeholders.

• Explain complex technical subjects, risks, and architectural decisions in terms appropriate for both technical and executive audiences.

• Help customers develop practical technology roadmaps aligned with their business, security, compliance, and operational requirements.

• Provide technical recommendations regarding modernization, cloud adoption, security improvements, lifecycle management, and infrastructure investments.

• Participate in customer meetings, technical workshops, discovery sessions, and architecture reviews as needed.

Presales & Solution Development

• Provide senior technical support for complex or strategic sales opportunities.

• Participate in discovery and solution-design discussions with prospective customers.

• Validate that proposed solutions are technically achievable, appropriately scoped, and supportable by inDirectIT.

• Assist in developing technical scopes, assumptions, architectures, and effort estimates for proposals and statements of work.

• Identify technical risks or unknowns requiring additional discovery before commitments are made.

• Help ensure that solutions sold to customers align with the company’s technical capabilities and delivery standards., * Take ownership of difficult technical problems and drive them toward resolution.

• Make well-reasoned technical decisions when requirements are incomplete or competing priorities exist.

• Recognize when additional discovery is necessary before committing to a technical approach.

• Challenge proposed solutions constructively when technical, security, operational, or scalability concerns exist.

• Communicate technical risks clearly to company leadership and customers.

• Mentor other engineers without becoming a bottleneck for routine technical decisions.

• Delegate task- and project-level implementation appropriately while maintaining architectural oversight.

• Remain hands-on enough to personally validate designs and assist with the most difficult technical challenges.

• Consider not only whether a solution can be implemented, but whether it can be securely and efficiently supported after implementation.

Role within inDirectIT

The Principal IT Architect is the company’s senior technical architecture and engineering resource and works closely with Operations, Project Management, Security, Account Management, and Executive Leadership.

The position is expected to provide technical leadership across multiple customer environments and initiatives rather than functioning solely as an engineer assigned to individual projects.

The Principal IT Architect does not replace the responsibilities of operational or executive management. Instead, the role owns and influences the technical architecture, engineering standards, technical quality, and technical direction necessary for inDirectIT to successfully deliver and support increasingly complex customer environments..

Pay: $155,000.00 - $190,000.00 per year

The successful candidate should demonstrate extensive senior-level experience designing, implementing, and supporting complex enterprise technology environments.

Strong expertise is expected in several of the following areas:

• Microsoft Azure architecture and engineering

• Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Government cloud environments (GCC and GCC High)

• Amazon Web Services (AWS) architecture and engineering across Commercial and AWS GovCloud (US) environments

• Identity and access management, including Entra ID and Active Directory

• Windows Server and hybrid infrastructure

• Networking, routing, VPN, firewall, and cloud connectivity

• Endpoint and device management

• Virtualization and virtual desktop technologies

• Infrastructure and cloud migrations

• Backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity

• Cybersecurity architecture and security controls

• Enterprise troubleshooting and root-cause analysis

Experience working within MSP, consulting, government contracting, Defense Industrial Base, or other regulated environments is strongly preferred.

Experience with CMMC, NIST SP 800-171, DFARS, CUI, GCC High, Azure Government, or FedRAMP environments is highly desirable.

Leadership Expectations

The Principal IT Architect is expected to operate with a high degree of independence and sound technical judgment.

• 401(k)
• Dental insurance
• Flexible schedule
• Health insurance
• Paid time off
• Relocation assistance
• Vision insurance