What success looks like in this role:
The Lead Cloud Migration Architect is the technical leader and Enterprise Architect for the application migration and modernisation programme delivered across Azure and AWS cloud platforms. The role leads application assessment, migration planning, and architecture activities, defining migration strategies, migration waves, target-state architectures, and transformation roadmaps that support the customer's cloud adoption objectives.
As the senior technical authority for the programme, the Lead Cloud Migration Architect provides leadership to the migration team and serves as the primary technical point of contact for the customer. The role works closely with customer stakeholders, architects, project teams, and Unisys leadership to ensure migration decisions are aligned with business objectives, architecture standards, security requirements, delivery timelines, and commercial outcomes.
The role owns the technical outcome of the programme, leading architectural decision-making from assessment through to implementation and ensuring migration designs, plans, and deliverables are technically sound, aligned with customer requirements, and capable of delivering a successful and sustainable cloud transformation.
The Lead Cloud Migration Architect is accountable for leading application discovery and assessment activities, defining migration approaches, prioritisation and wave planning, and guiding applications through their migration journey. The role is responsible for taking design and architecture artefacts for each migration wave through the customer's SDLC approval gates, ensuring feedback is addressed and approvals are secured in a timely manner.
The role represents Unisys within the customer's Architecture Review Board (ARB) and wider architecture function, providing technical leadership across assessment, strategy, design, and migration planning activities. Working closely with the Delivery Lead, Security Lead, customer stakeholders, technology partners, and the AI/Tools Architect, the Lead Cloud Migration Architect ensures migration decisions are technically sound, aligned with customer policy, and support the successful delivery of the overall programme.
As the senior technical leader for the engagement, the Lead Cloud Migration Architect provides leadership, direction, and coordination across assessment, architecture, migration, implementation, and transition activities. The role acts as the primary technical representative for Unisys, working closely with customer executives, business stakeholders, programme leadership, and delivery teams to ensure successful programme outcomes. The role is responsible for maintaining alignment between technical strategy, migration delivery, business objectives, and governance requirements while proactively managing technical risks, dependencies, and stakeholder expectations throughout the programme lifecycle.
Key Responsibilities
Enterprise Architecture Ownership
- Act as the programme's Enterprise Architect, owning application, infrastructure and cloud, data, and business architecture as a single, coherent view, and working closely with the Security Lead so security architecture aligns with that same view.
- Own the cloud target architecture and application architecture across Azure and AWS, ensuring designs are consistent, integrated, and traceable to customer requirements.
- Own the technical outcome of the engagement, working alongside the Project Delivery Lead, who holds ultimate accountability for the programme overall.
- Ensure every architecture decision and design artefact reflects the customer's business needs, policies, and procedures before it proceeds to build.
- Own the end-to-end migration roadmap, ensuring assessment, planning, design, migration, testing, and transition activities remain aligned with programme objectives.
- Provide technical leadership and strategic direction across all migration workstreams, ensuring consistent decision-making and architectural alignment.
- Act as the final technical escalation point for architecture, migration, and implementation-related issues and decisions.
- Ensure alignment between architecture strategy, programme priorities, and business outcomes throughout the migration lifecycle.
SDLC Approval Gate Ownership
- Own the passage of design and architecture documents for each migration wave or batch through the customer's SDLC approval gates, from submission to endorsement.
- Ensure design refinements raised at each gate effectively address customer feedback before resubmission, avoiding repeat approval cycles.
- Maintain a structured approach to architecture governance, ensuring artefacts are complete, accurate, and submitted on schedule.
- Drive the closure of technical actions required to achieve approvals within agreed programme timelines.
Continuous Improvement, Reuse and Standardisation
- Develop the process for capturing migration patterns and automation built during delivery, ensuring they are documented and available for reuse across later migration waves.
- Continuously drive efficiencies in the SDLC process, delivery standardisation, and the use of AI and tooling, reducing rework and cycle time across the programme.
- Review completed migration waves for reusable patterns and feed improvements back into the assessment, design, and delivery methodology.
- Promote and establish migration standards and best practices across all delivery teams.
Migration Approach and Tooling / AI Alignment
- Own full alignment of the migration approach, including application of the 7Rs framework and tooling/AI usage, with the customer's business needs, policies, and procedures.
- Propose AI and tooling capabilities to the customer and work closely with them through their approval process, drawing on the AI/Tools Architect within the team to prepare the technical case.
- Govern the future-proofing of tool and platform choices, balancing innovation against the customer's risk appetite and standards.
- Ensure migration planning, wave sequencing, and transformation activities remain aligned to technical and business objectives.
- Evaluate and recommend migration accelerators, automation opportunities, and technology innovations that increase programme efficiency and reduce delivery risk.
Customer Engagement and Relationship Ownership
- Build and maintain close, trusted relationships with the customer's architects, architecture leadership, executive stakeholders, business leaders, and technical teams.
- Serve as the senior day-to-day customer-facing representative for the migration programme.
- Work directly and continuously with customer business and technology stakeholders to validate architecture direction and resolve technical concerns.
- Lead customer workshops, migration planning sessions, executive briefings, technical governance reviews, and steering committee updates.
- Represent Unisys architecture positions in customer forums, working sessions, and technical reviews with clarity and technical credibility.
- Manage technical stakeholder expectations and maintain alignment between customer objectives, programme priorities, and delivery outcomes.
- Proactively identify, communicate, and resolve customer concerns, risks, and dependencies that may affect migration success.
- Work closely with customer programme leadership to establish migration priorities, sequencing, and roadmap decisions.
Architecture Review Board and Governance Alignment
- Own alignment with the customer's Architecture Review Board (ARB) and architecture function for every design and migration decision requiring endorsement.
- Prepare and present architecture artefacts, options papers, migration strategies, and design decisions to the ARB.
- Carry endorsed decisions back into delivery and ensure implementation aligns with approved architecture.
- Maintain architecture governance discipline across the programme, including design authority, standards compliance, and decision traceability.
- Ensure all solution decisions remain compliant with customer policies, standards, security requirements, and governance processes.
Team Leadership
- Provide overall leadership and direction to the migration programme team, including architects, migration specialists, engineers, analysts, and partner resources.
- Act as team lead for all architects engaged in assessment, strategy, and design functions, including the AI/Tools Architect, setting technical direction and reviewing their output for quality, consistency, and customer alignment.
- Establish team priorities, work allocation, and technical delivery objectives across migration waves and workstreams.
- Lead technical risk, issue, and dependency management activities across the programme.
- Drive collaboration across customer, partner, and Unisys teams to ensure successful programme execution.
- Work closely with the Project Delivery Lead and Security Lead to ensure programme objectives, delivery priorities, and technical outcomes remain aligned.
- Mentor and develop architects and technical specialists, building capability across application, infrastructure, cloud, data, and business architecture disciplines.
- Foster a culture of accountability, innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement.
Programme Leadership and Delivery Alignment
- Lead the technical planning and execution of the migration programme, ensuring alignment between architecture strategy and delivery execution.
- Develop and maintain migration roadmaps, migration wave plans, transition strategies, and technical delivery plans.
- Identify programme risks, issues, assumptions, and dependencies and work with customer and Unisys stakeholders to drive timely resolution.
- Provide regular technical status reporting, risk assessments, and programme updates to customer and Unisys leadership.
- Ensure migration decisions consider business value, cost, schedule, security, operational supportability, and long-term sustainability.
- Support programme governance activities through technical oversight and leadership across all migration phases.
- Ensure architecture, migration, and implementation teams operate cohesively towards agreed programme objectives and milestones.
Cost Awareness and FinOps Input
- Design with cost effectiveness in mind, evaluating architecture options against cost, performance, and sustainability trade-offs.
- Provide architecture input into the customer's FinOps function.
- Identify opportunities to reduce recurring cloud costs through right-sizing, architecture simplification, and consumption-based design choices.
- Support business case development and migration planning activities with accurate cost modelling assumptions and architecture guidance.
Innovation and Sustainability
- Drive innovation in migration tooling, automation, and AI-assisted delivery methods.
- Own the sustainability of the application, delivery, and support model, ensuring the target architecture remains supportable and extensible beyond go-live.
- Evaluate emerging Azure and AWS capabilities for fit against the customer's target architecture and long-term technology direction.
- Promote modern engineering practices that enhance migration quality, speed, and operational resilience.
Security Alignment
- Work closely with the Security Lead to ensure the migration approach and target architecture align with the customer's security requirements.
- Ensure security architecture is reflected consistently throughout all design and migration activities.
- Ensure security-related decisions are appropriately represented through SDLC, architecture, and governance reviews.
Partner Management
- Work closely with technology and services partners to validate that proposed tooling, platforms, and managed capabilities meet architecture requirements.
- Coordinate partner technical input into architecture design and review activities.
- Ensure partner commitments are reflected accurately within migration planning, architecture decisions, and programme delivery activities.
Essential Skills, Knowledge and Experience
Professional Experience
- Extensive experience as an Enterprise Architect or Lead Architect on large-scale application migration programmes involving Azure and AWS target clouds.
- Demonstrated depth across application, infrastructure, cloud, data, security, and business architecture disciplines.
- Proven experience delivering architecture solutions in high-security and regulated environments.
- Proven experience acting as the lead technical authority and primary customer-facing representative on large-scale cloud transformation programmes.
- Demonstrated experience leading multidisciplinary teams comprising architects, engineers, migration specialists, and partner organisations.
- Proven ability to manage senior stakeholder relationships across customer, vendor, and internal delivery organisations.
- Experience presenting programme status, risks, roadmap recommendations, and architecture strategy to executive and governance forums.
- Track record of owning technical outcomes while working alongside a delivery lead responsible for overall programme governance and delivery accountability.
Technical Knowledge
- Deep knowledge of Azure and AWS target-state architecture patterns, migration frameworks, and 7Rs migration strategies.
- Strong understanding of application architecture, cloud infrastructure architecture, data architecture, and security architecture principles.
- Working knowledge of FinOps principles and cloud cost optimisation.
- Expertise with AI-assisted migration and delivery tooling.
- Understanding of Enterprise Architecture frameworks and Architecture Review Board governance processes.
Leadership and Stakeholder Skills
- Exceptional relationship-building skills and ability to gain trust with executive, business, and technical stakeholders.
- Strong presentation and facilitation skills, capable of influencing Architecture Review Boards, steering committees, and executive stakeholders.
- Demonstrated ability to lead multidisciplinary teams across customer, partner, and internal delivery organisations.
- Proven experience engaging with executive stakeholders and presenting programme direction, risks, and recommendations at senior leadership level.
- Strong negotiation and influencing skills, capable of driving consensus across competing business and technical priorities.
- Ability to communicate complex technical concepts effectively to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Key Competencies and Behaviours
Ownership and Accountability
Owns the technical outcome of the engagement and provides leadership across migration planning, architecture, governance, and technical delivery activities. Accountable for ensuring architecture decisions, migration strategies, and programme outcomes remain aligned with customer objectives and delivery commitments.
Customer Focus
Builds trusted relationships across executive, programme, business, and technical stakeholder groups and acts as the primary technical ambassador for Unisys throughout the engagement, aligning migration and architecture outcomes to customer business objectives.
Technical Leadership
Provides technical and operational leadership across the migration programme, directing architects, migration specialists, engineers, and partners while maintaining accountability for the technical success of the overall engagement.
Governance Discipline
Maintains rigorous alignment with the customer's SDLC approval gates and Architecture Review Board processes, ensuring all decisions are endorsed, traceable, and compliant with customer standards.
Commercial and Cost Awareness
Designs with cost effectiveness in mind and provides informed input into the customer's FinOps function and cloud cost optimisation activities.
Innovation and Future-Proofing
Actively evaluates new tooling, automation, AI capabilities, and cloud innovations and applies them appropriately to support long-term sustainability and programme success.
Communication and Influence
Acts as a trusted advisor to both customer and Unisys stakeholders, influencing strategic decisions, driving alignment across business and technology priorities, and communicating architecture and migration strategies clearly at all organisational levels.
Success Measures
Success in this role will be measured through:
- Design and architecture documents for each migration wave successfully clearing SDLC approval gates with minimal repeat cycles.
- Architecture and migration decisions endorsed by the customer's ARB without material rework.
- Delivery of migration waves and programme milestones in accordance with agreed roadmaps and schedules.
- Effective management and resolution of technical risks, issues, and dependencies.
- Full alignment of migration approaches, tooling, and AI initiatives with customer business needs and governance requirements.
- Growth in reusable migration patterns, automation assets, and measurable SDLC efficiencies.
- Quality and effectiveness of architecture input provided into customer FinOps activities.
- Quality, consistency, and delivery performance across migration, architecture, assessment, and implementation teams.
- High levels of customer confidence and satisfaction with Unisys technical leadership.
- Strong stakeholder relationships across customer, partner, and internal delivery organisations.
- Sustainability, supportability, and long-term success of the target architecture and migration outcomes beyond go-live.
You will be successful in this role if you have:
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