IT Architect
Cohesity · Heathrow · $140,800–$176,000 (stated in the posting)
We strongly prefer candidates who are currently located in or near the designated job location. Candidates outside the area should apply only if they are committed to relocating prior to their start date and have the legal right to work in the job location.
Cohesity is a leader in AI-powered data security and management. Aided by an extensive ecosystem of partners, Cohesity makes it easy to secure, protect, manage, and get value from data — across the data center, edge, and cloud. Cohesity helps organizations defend against cybersecurity threats with comprehensive data security and management capabilities, including immutable backup snapshots, AI-based threat detection, monitoring for malicious behavior, and rapid recovery at scale.
We’ve been named a Leader by multiple analyst firms and have been globally recognized for Innovation, Product Strength, and Simplicity in Design.
Join us on our mission to shape the future of our industry.
About the Role
We are looking for an IT Architect to join our Core Platform & Lab Services organization based in our Heathrow, FL office. This is a senior individual contributor role on the CPLS team with primary ownership of AWS cloud architecture and broad responsibility across Cohesity's hybrid infrastructure -- including the physical lab environment that directly enables Cohesity's product engineering and QA teams.
As an IT Architect, you will be the design authority for cloud and infrastructure initiatives, translating business requirements and IT strategy into scalable, secure, and operationally sustainable architectures. You will define standards, produce reference architectures, and work closely with engineering, operations, security, and IT leadership to ensure what gets built is what should be built.
This is not an implementation role. You will operate ahead of delivery: designing, deciding, governing, and enabling the engineers who build and operate the systems you architect. You will own Architecture Decision Records, participate in architecture governance, and be a sought-out voice for design input across the team.
What You Will Do
AWS & Cloud Architecture
- Own the architecture of Cohesity's AWS environment, including landing zone design, account structure, network topology, IAM, and cost governance.
- Define and maintain cloud architecture standards and guardrails across compute, storage, networking, containers, and serverless services.
- Architect multi-account AWS environments using AWS Organizations, Control Tower, and Service Control Policies.
- Design and govern cloud-native and hybrid connectivity patterns including Direct Connect, Transit Gateway, VPC peering, and PrivateLink.
- Lead FinOps architecture: define tagging standards, cost allocation models, Reserved Instance and Savings Plan strategies, and cloud cost governance frameworks.
- Drive infrastructure-as-code adoption using Terraform and Ansible across the AWS environment; define IaC standards and module patterns for engineering teams.
- Evaluate and recommend AWS services and architectural patterns; produce documented trade-off analyses with clear recommendations.
Engineering Lab Infrastructure Architecture
- Own the architecture of Cohesity's three physical engineering lab facilities, which collectively support 50,000+ VMs and 10,000+ hardware devices serving Cohesity product engineering and QA teams.
- Design virtualization, compute, storage, and networking architecture for lab environments at scale, including resource pooling, tenant isolation, and capacity management across concurrent product workloads.
- Architect hardware lifecycle and bare-metal provisioning workflows; define automation frameworks for VM provisioning, environment management, and self-service infrastructure consumption.
- Define observability and resiliency architecture for lab environments; ensure lab availability and performance meet the needs of internal product engineering teams.
Hybrid Infrastructure Architecture
- Architect hybrid infrastructure solutions spanning on-premises data centers, AWS, and other hyperscalers.
- Define integration patterns and connectivity standards between on-premises environments and cloud, including identity federation and network segmentation.
- Design compute, storage, and networking architectures for enterprise workloads across hybrid environments.
- Architect disaster recovery and resiliency patterns; define RTO/RPO requirements and validate through design.
- Maintain service dependency models in CMDB to support impact analysis and incident response.
AI Infrastructure Architecture
- Own the infrastructure architecture for Cohesity's internal AI foundry platform: GPU and accelerator compute environments, multi-tenant model serving infrastructure, and AI data pipeline architecture.
- Design AI agent orchestration infrastructure: tool-use patterns, multi-agent system topology, and MCP/API integration patterns that are safe and governable at enterprise scale.
- Architect the AI API gateway layer: model routing, rate limiting, cost allocation, audit logging, and controls that prevent ungoverned shadow AI consumption across the organization.
- Define the observability architecture for AI workloads as a distinct layer from traditional infrastructure monitoring -- covering model drift detection, hallucination and quality monitoring, and prompt/response logging for compliance and evaluation pipelines.
- Architect AI-specific security controls: IAM and zero-trust patterns extended to AI workloads, LLM-specific attack surface coverage including prompt injection, data exfiltration via model output, and supply chain risks in model and tool dependencies.
- Partner with enterprise technology team on application and model layer architecture; ensure the infrastructure layer is designed to support their roadmap without creating platform constraints.
Platform & Enterprise Services Architecture
- Contribute to CMDB governance and CI lifecycle architecture; define and maintain service dependency and data model standards.
- Architect Kubernetes-based platform services; define container orchestration standards, Helm patterns, and GitOps workflows.
Integration & Data Architecture
- Design integration patterns between enterprise SaaS platforms, internal systems, and AWS-hosted services.
- Define API governance standards, event-driven integration patterns, and data flow architecture.
- Ensure data architecture aligns with IT governance, CMDB, and asset management requirements.
Standards, Governance & Roadmap
- Co-own the CPLS technology roadmap with IT leadership; translate architectural direction into prioritized initiatives with clear business rationale.
- Own Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) for significant design choices; document context, options, decision, and consequences.
- Define and maintain reference architectures and architecture standards for assigned domains.
- Participate in architecture review and provide design approval for initiatives within the domain.
- Reduce architectural fragmentation by championing reusable, documented patterns over bespoke one-off implementations.
- Produce curated, opinionated technology guidance for the CPLS team: translate emerging technology into clear assessments of what it means for our existing architecture and what we should do about it.
Cross-Functional Leadership & Mentorship
- Partner with IT engineering, operations, network, security, and service management teams to ensure architectures are viable, secure, and operable.
- Communicate architectural decisions clearly to both technical peers and non-technical stakeholders including IT leadership.
- Mentor IC3/IC4 engineers; provide design guidance and architectural review for complex implementations.
- Contribute to the technical growth of the broader IT team through documentation, design reviews, and knowledge sharing.
What You Bring
Required
- 8+ years of experience in IT infrastructure or cloud architecture roles, with at least 4 years focused on AWS.
- Deep, hands-on AWS expertise: VPC, EC2, S3, RDS, EKS, Lambda, IAM, Organizations, Control Tower, Transit Gateway, Direct Connect, and related services.
- Demonstrated experience designing and governing multi-account AWS environments at enterprise scale.
- Strong proficiency in infrastructure-as-code, specifically Terraform; experience with Ansible or equivalent.
- Experience architecting large-scale virtualization environments; familiarity with VM lifecycle management, resource scheduling, and multi-tenant isolation at scale.
- Experience architecting hybrid cloud environments connecting on-premises infrastructure to AWS.
- Proficiency in cloud cost management: tagging strategies, cost allocation, Reserved Instance planning, and FinOps frameworks.
- Experience with identity and access management architecture including Entra ID, SSO/SAML/OIDC, RBAC, and zero-trust network access.
- Strong understanding of network architecture: routing, DNS, firewalls, load balancing, and hybrid connectivity patterns.
- Experience producing architecture documentation including high-level designs, reference architectures, and ADRs.
- Demonstrated ability to influence technical direction across teams without direct authority.
- Strong communication skills: able to translate complex architectural decisions for both engineering and executive audiences.
Preferred
- AWS Solutions Architect Professional certification or equivalent demonstrated expertise.
- Experience architecting physical datacenter or lab environments at significant scale (thousands of physical devices or tens of thousands of VMs).
- Experience with bare-metal provisioning frameworks and hardware lifecycle automation.
- Experience with Kubernetes and container platform architecture (EKS, Helm, GitOps).
- Experience architecting AI/ML infrastructure including GPU compute environments, model serving platforms, and AI API gateway patterns.
- Familiarity with AI agent frameworks, multi-agent orchestration patterns, or MCP/tool-use integration architectures.
- Understanding of LLM-specific security risks including prompt injection, model output exfiltration, and AI supply chain threats.
- Familiarity with AI observability concepts: model drift detection, quality monitoring, and prompt/response logging for compliance pipelines.
- Familiarity with observability platforms such as Dynatrace or equivalent APM/monitoring tools.
- Experience with ServiceNow CMDB and IT asset management architecture.
- Familiarity with enterprise integration and iPaaS platforms (Workato, MuleSoft, or equivalent).
- Experience in a high-growth technology company or similarly fast-paced enterprise IT environment.
Who Thrives in This Role
This role is a strong fit if you are someone who:
- Thinks in systems, not just components -- you naturally consider second-order effects and cross-domain dependencies.
- Makes architectural decisions on rapidly evolving technology -- you set a defensible direction while tooling and best practices are still maturing, and you revisit that direction without ego when the landscape shifts.
- Writes decisions down: you understand that undocumented architecture is architecture that will be re-litigated in six months.
- Takes operational reality seriously: you design things that can actually be built, operated, and supported.
- Has a point of view on technology and shares it: you translate emerging trends into clear, opinionated guidance on what they mean for our architecture and what we should do about them.
- Is a collaborator and a teacher: you get energy from enabling engineers to do better work, not from being the only one who knows the answer.
- Holds a high bar without being a blocker: you make architecture review a force multiplier, not a bottleneck.
This role is not a fit if you are looking primarily for hands-on implementation work. You will be most effective if you are energized by design, governance, and organizational influence -- with occasional deep dives into technical detail to support the work.
#LI-RB1
Disclosure Pursuant to Applicable State Equal Pay Transparency Laws - This position has a starting pay range as listed below. Actual salary depends upon many factors, including a candidate’s skills, qualifications and experience, location, and salary expectations, and therefore a starting salary at the low end, high end, or even above the stated range may be offered. This position may also be eligible for bonus compensation, commission (if in a sales function), and/or equity grants. Additionally, full-time employees are eligible to participate in our comprehensive benefits framework, including health and wellness benefits, vacation, paid holidays and refresh days, 401(k) retirement plan, life and disability insurance coverages, and other benefits the Company may offer from time to time.
Pay Range :
The compensation noted above is based on an annualized hourly rate assuming normal full-time employment.
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Equal Employment Opportunity Employer (EEOE)
Cohesity is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, national origin or nationality, ancestry, age, disability, gender identity or expression, marital status, veteran status or any other category protected by law.
If you are an individual with a disability and require a reasonable accommodation to complete any part of the application process, or are limited in the ability or unable to access or use this online application process and need an alternative method for applying, you may contact us at 1-855-9COHESITY or recruiting@cohesity.com for assistance.
In-Office Expectations
Cohesity employees who are within a reasonable commute (e.g. within a forty-five (45) minute average travel time) work out of our core offices 2-3 days a week of their choosing.
Interested candidates based outside of the designated areas are welcome to apply, provided they have the right to work in the job location.