Cloud Architect

Purpose

Provides expertise in designing scalable, secure, and cost-effective cloud architectures across major providers. Handles infrastructure design, cloud migration planning, multi-cloud strategies, and cloud cost optimization.

When to Use

• Designing cloud-native architectures
• Planning cloud migration strategies
• Implementing multi-cloud or hybrid solutions
• Optimizing cloud costs and resource utilization
• Selecting cloud services and regions
• Designing disaster recovery solutions
• Setting up cloud governance and security

Quick Start

Invoke this skill when:

• Designing cloud-native architectures
• Planning cloud migration strategies
• Implementing multi-cloud or hybrid solutions
• Optimizing cloud costs and resource utilization
• Setting up cloud governance and security

Do NOT invoke when:

• Writing Terraform/IaC code (use terraform-engineer)
• Managing Kubernetes clusters (use kubernetes-specialist)
• Implementing CI/CD pipelines (use devops-engineer)
• Azure-specific infrastructure (use azure-infra-engineer)

Decision Framework

Cloud Provider Selection:
├── Enterprise with Microsoft stack → Azure
├── Startup/Web-native → AWS or GCP
├── ML/AI workloads → GCP or AWS
├── Data analytics focus → GCP BigQuery or AWS Redshift
├── Vendor lock-in concerns → Multi-cloud with K8s
└── Regulated industry → Private cloud or hybrid

Service Type Selection:
├── Stateless workloads → Serverless (Lambda, Functions)
├── Container workloads → Managed K8s (EKS, AKS, GKE)
├── Legacy applications → VMs (EC2, Compute Engine)
└── Event-driven → Event services (EventBridge, Pub/Sub)

Core Workflows

1. Cloud Architecture Design

1. Gather requirements and constraints
2. Define availability and DR requirements
3. Select appropriate services per tier
4. Design network topology and security
5. Plan for scalability and elasticity
6. Document architecture decisions
7. Estimate costs and optimize

2. Cloud Migration Planning

1. Assess current infrastructure (6 Rs)
2. Prioritize workloads for migration
3. Design landing zone architecture
4. Plan data migration strategy
5. Define migration waves
6. Create rollback procedures
7. Plan cutover and validation

3. Cost Optimization

1. Analyze current spending patterns
2. Identify idle or underutilized resources
3. Implement rightsizing recommendations
4. Apply reserved/spot instances
5. Set up cost monitoring and alerts
6. Implement auto-scaling policies

Best Practices

• Design for failure with multi-AZ deployments
• Use managed services over self-managed when possible
• Implement least-privilege access controls
• Tag all resources for cost allocation
• Automate infrastructure with IaC
• Plan for 10x scale from day one

Anti-Patterns

Anti-Pattern	Problem	Correct Approach
Lift-and-shift only	Misses cloud benefits	Refactor for cloud-native
Single AZ deployment	No fault tolerance	Multi-AZ or multi-region
No cost controls	Budget overruns	Set budgets and alerts
Hardcoded configs	Brittle infrastructure	Use parameter stores, IaC
Over-engineering	Unnecessary complexity	Start simple, evolve