Principal Solutions Architect, National Security & Defence

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is looking for a Principal Solutions Architect to join our thriving technical community and growing public sector business in the UK. You would be part of a friendly and supportive team, working together to bring the latest in disruptive, cutting-edge cloud computing technologies to organisations serving the public.

As a Principal Solutions Architect in the National Security & Defence Team you will be supporting the UK’s most important National Security & Defence organisations to accelerate and scale innovation, reduce costs, drive efficiency and use cloud technology in support of their missions.

In this role, your creativity and strategic experience will support customers at an executive level to solve business challenges and drive change, with the opportunity to define or invent cloud-native reference architectures with the worldwide AWS Solutions Architect community.

You will lead in the creation and sharing of best practices, technical content and new reference architectures (e.g. white papers, code samples, blog posts) and evangelise and educate about AWS technology (e.g. through workshops, user groups, meetups, public speaking, online videos or conferences)

Key job responsibilities

As a Principal Solutions Architect, you are a technical leader and strategic influencer for customers and the organization. You combine strong business acumen with deep technical skills to architect solutions to significantly complex problems. You excel at decomposing complex issues into straightforward, elegant solutions.

You operate in highly ambiguous environments where business objectives, opportunities, technology strategy, and solution design are undefined. You leverage your extensive experience, industry knowledge, and business context expertise to influence the long-term strategic direction of customers. You identify both immediate and future risks and constraints, and advise customers on the right trade-offs to meet their long-term goals.

You are a trusted advisor to senior customer leadership, building consensus and alignment across diverse teams to deliver impactful solutions. Your work results in measurable, long-term benefits to the customer's business. You are a thought leader, curating and delivering strategic technical content that educates the broader community.

Within the organization, you are a key influencer, contributing to strategic planning, identifying gaps and opportunities, and advocating for the development of critical future skills. You actively develop and mentor other Solutions Architects, ensuring the continued growth of the community.

About the team

Diverse Experiences

Amazon values diverse experiences. Even if you do not meet all of the preferred qualifications and skills listed in the job description, we encourage candidates to apply. If your career is just starting, hasn’t followed a traditional path, or includes alternative experiences, don’t let it stop you from applying.

Why AWS

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. We pioneered cloud computing and never stopped innovating — that’s why customers from the most successful startups to Global 500 companies trust our robust suite of products and services to power their businesses.

Inclusive Team Culture

Here at AWS, it’s in our nature to learn and be curious. Our employee-led affinity groups foster a culture of inclusion that empower us to be proud of our differences. Ongoing events and learning experiences, including our Conversations on Race and Ethnicity (CORE) and AmazeCon (gender diversity) conferences, inspire us to never stop embracing our uniqueness.

Mentorship and Career Growth

We’re continuously raising our performance bar as we strive to become Earth’s Best Employer. That’s why you’ll find endless knowledge-sharing, mentorship and other career-advancing resources here to help you develop into a better-rounded professional.

Basic Qualifications

• Experience developing technology solutions and evangelising end-to-end technology roadmaps that guide IT transformations toward cloud computing
• Experience in specific technology domain areas like software development, cloud computing, systems engineering, infrastructure, security, networking, data and analytics
• Experience communicating across technical and non-technical audiences and at C-level, including training, workshops, publications
• Already hold, or be willing to undergo, UK government security clearance and meet residency requirements.

Preferred Qualifications

• Knowledge of distributed systems design and implementation or equivalent
• Knowledge of large scale automation and workflow management or equivalent
• Knowledge of database design and implementation or equivalent
• Knowledge of presentations and whiteboarding skills with a high degree of comfort speaking with internal and external executives, IT management, and developers
• Experience architecting, migrating, transforming or modernizing customer requirements to the cloud