Solutions Architect at Amazon Web Services

DESCRIPTION
This role is within the South Africa organization and you would be working with Enterprise customers.

• Solutions Architects (SAs) work hand in hand with AWS customers to help them make the most of the Cloud. They are at the crossroads of business and technology and engage with organizations at all stages of cloud adoption, helping customer adopt the best solution for their needs. Solutions Architects are responsible for creating and presenting technical content and sharing best practices.
• SAs are responsible for the overall technical relationship between customers and AWS and make recommendations on security, cost, performance, reliability and operational efficiency. They work to understand the customer's needs and give prescriptive guidance on how to create business value with AWS technology. Solutions Architects lead activities such as architecture reviews, white-boarding sessions, demos and technical workshops. They collaborate with other teams such as account management, professional services, support, product teams and the AWS partner ecosystem.
• In this role, you will use your technical skills to work with customers to architect solutions to difficult problems. You will focus on work where the business objective (e.g., reduce risks, reduce costs, increase revenue from existing products, invent new products), opportunity, and strategy may be defined; but the technical solution design is not defined.
• You will be a trusted technical advisor, focusing on understanding the customer needs, their context and specific value drivers in order to create the right technical solution that considers the appropriate trade-offs. You own the end-to-end design of your solutions, but have the full support of the AWS ecosystem, especially for complex risks or constraints. You will also seek opportunities to simplify existing solutions, processes, and designs. Your will solutions adhere to best practices of being secure, scalable, reliable, and performant.
• The Solutions Architecture team is a diverse group of technologists from a variety of backgrounds. Practical knowledge of the AWS platform is desired but not required, provided you have a sound technical foundation and a desire to learn.
• You will have the support to grow your expertise in industry and technology areas of depth. Every day you will learn something new from your customers, your peers and your own experiments.
• At Amazon you will be encouraged and rewarded for doing what is right for the long-term success of the customer. We value your passion to discover, invent and build on behalf of customers.
• Amazon has always been, and always will be, committed to diversity and inclusion. We seek builders from all backgrounds to join our teams, and we encourage our employees to bring their authentic, original, and best selves to work.

Roles and Responsibilities

•  Build technical relationships with customers and operate as their trusted advisor. The best interests of the customer will shape the guidance you provide.
•  Work directly with customers to accelerate their projects and recommend best-practice architectures in line with their long-term business outcomes.
•  Understand architectural and design principles and can apply and validate them effectively.
•  Create solutions that are secure, scalable, reliable, and performant.
•  Architect for the immediate and future business or technical needs.
•  Effectively communicate with technical and non-technical audiences.
•  Run effective meetings both internally, and with customers while learning to build consensus.
•  Advocate and educate about AWS technology (e.g. through workshops, user groups, meetups, public speaking, online videos or conferences).
•  Share the voice of the customer to help improve AWS services over time
•  Help coordinate and/or speak at events that educate technical and business audiences.
•  Participate in the creation and sharing of best practices, technical content and new reference architectures (e.g. white papers, code samples, blog posts).
•  Contribute to the growth of the Solutions Architecture organization by interviewing candidates and having a voice in hiring decisions. You will also be helping others develop new skills by mentoring team members.

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS

•  Background in one or more of the following: Cloud Architecture, Solutions Architecture, Systems Design, Software Development, Infrastructure Architecture, Data Engineering or DevOps
•  Technical Degree (Computer Science, Maths, Engineering or equivalent) and/or relevant tech experience.
•  Fluent written and verbal communication skills in English
•  Passion for technology and for learning

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

•  Experience designing, building, refactoring or operating large scale and impactful IT systems - either on premises or in the cloud
•  Working knowledge of cloud native architectures
•  Knowledge of a modern programming language (Python, JavaScript, Go, .Net, Java, etc.) and/or scripting, Infrastructure as Code etc.
•  In-depth working knowledge in a technology domain such as distributed internet-scale web or mobile applications, DevOps, Serverless, Migrations, Big Data, Analytics, Machine Learning, Enterprise workloads (SAP, VMware, Windows etc.), high-performance databases (SQL and/or NoSQL), complex networking implementations, highly secured workloads etc.
•  Experience working in a customer-facing role
•  Experience with public speaking
•  AWS certification (e.g. AWS Solutions Architect Associate or Professional) or other industry certification
•  Continued or advanced learning (Master, MBA, PhD or equivalent)