Dir, Architecture

As a Director Cloud Architecture at Syneos Health, your role will be crucial in owning architecture decisions, standards, and guardrails across all cloud environments to ensure resiliency, security, and scalability. You will define cloud architecture strategy and reference architecture, establish availability, dependency, resiliency, and disaster recovery patterns upfront, and translate architectural intent into enforceable guardrails through policy as code. Your collaboration with Engineering and Infrastructure will be vital in reviewing and shaping platform designs, driving consistent architecture governance, and enabling delivery teams to build compliant, repeatable solutions through clear standards and approved patterns. Key Responsibilities: - Own cloud architecture strategy, reference architectures, and engineering standards across Azure/AWS/GCP/OCIand hybrid environments, with strong PaaS patterns and guidance. - Define resiliency, disaster recovery, security, availability, and dependency patterns upfront (including target SLAs/SLOs) and socialize them through clear design artifacts. - Translate architectural intent into enforceable guardrails, including policy as code, blueprinting, and paved-road patterns that reduce variation and rework. - Review and shape platform and product designs in partnership with Engineering and Infrastructure, ensuring alignment to standards and documented risk tradeoffs. - Establish and run consistent architecture governance (design reviews, decision records, exception process, and lifecycle updates to standards). - Lead dependency modeling and risk assessments for critical services, driving pragmatic recommendations that balance resiliency, cost, performance, and delivery timelines. - Define cloud landing-zone and platform guardrails (networking, identity, encryption, logging/monitoring) and ensure they are adoptable by delivery teams. - Influence through standards: coach teams, create reusable templates and reference implementations, and drive alignment without becoming a delivery bottleneck. Qualifications Required: - Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent practical experience); advanced degree preferred. - Deep multi-cloud architecture experience (Azure, AWS, GCP, and OCI), including strong PaaS exposure and experience designing secure, scalable platform patterns. - Demonstrated credibility as a design authority across engineering and operations teams, with a track record of driving adoption of standards and reference architectures. - Strong grasp of resiliency engineering, disaster recovery, availability patterns, dependency modeling, and risk tradeoffs (cost/performance/reliability). - Hands-on experience translating architecture into enforceable guardrails (policy as code, landing zone controls, standardized pipelines/templates, and exception management). - Strong security architecture fundamentals (identity, network segmentation, encryption, logging/monitoring) and familiarity with regulated/audit-driven environments. - Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with the ability to influence through standards, coach teams, and align stakeholders on architectural decisions. This job description may not cover all tasks, duties, and responsibilities assigned to you by Syneos Health, as additional responsibilities may be assigned at the company's discretion. Your qualifications and experiences will be evaluated based on the requirements of the role, and the Company will determine what constitutes equivalent qualifications. Syneos Health is committed to creating an inclusive culture where you can be yourself and make a meaningful impact in the healthcare industry. As a Director Cloud Architecture at Syneos Health, your role will be crucial in owning architecture decisions, standards, and guardrails across all cloud environments to ensure resiliency, security, and scalability. You will define cloud architecture strategy and reference architecture, establish availability, dependency, resiliency, and disaster recovery patterns upfront, and translate architectural intent into enforceable guardrails through policy as code. Your collaboration with Engineering and Infrastructure will be vital in reviewing and shaping platform designs, driving consistent architecture governance, and enabling delivery teams to build compliant, repeatable solutions through clear standards and approved patterns. Key Responsibilities: - Own cloud architecture strategy, reference architectures, and engineering standards across Azure/AWS/GCP/OCIand hybrid environments, with strong PaaS patterns and guidance. - Define resiliency, disaster recovery, security, availability, and dependency patterns upfront (including target SLAs/SLOs) and socialize them through clear design artifacts. - Translate architectural intent into enforceable guardrails, including policy as code, blueprinting, and paved-road patterns that reduce variation and rework. -