Cloud Principal Architect - Application Innovation

Who We Are

At Kyndryl, we run and reimagine the mission-critical technology systems that drive advantage for the world’s leading businesses. We are at the heart of progress; with proven expertise and a continuous flow of AI-powered insight, enabling smarter decisions, faster innovation, and a lasting competitive edge. For our people—Kyndryls—that means doing purposeful work that powers human progress. Join us and experience a flexible, supportive environment where your well-being is prioritized and your potential can thrive.

The Role

Role Overview:

We are seeking a Cloud Principal Architect – Application Innovation to lead strategic cloud transformation initiatives for enterprise customers, with a strong focus on application modernization. This is a senior, customer-facing leadership role requiring deep expertise across pre-sales, solutioning, architecture, and delivery oversight.

The ideal candidate combines strong business and consultative skills with hands-on technical depth across cloud landing zone design, reusable module development, DevOps, cloud migration, and modernization. This individual will engage with executive and technical stakeholders, shape complex transformation programs, define target-state architectures, support sales pursuits, and provide architectural leadership through delivery.

This role is best suited for a senior practitioner who can bridge strategy, sales, architecture, and execution while driving measurable business outcomes for customers.

Key Responsibilities

Pre-Sales and Customer Engagement

• Partner with sales, account teams, and customer stakeholders to shape cloud and application modernization opportunities.

• Lead discovery workshops, architecture assessments, and solution discussions with business and technical audiences.

• Translate customer goals, pain points, and business priorities into compelling transformation roadmaps and solution proposals.

• Support RFPs, RFIs, bids, proposals, effort estimation, statements of work, and executive presentations.

• Act as a trusted advisor to customers, building strong relationships with CIOs, CTOs, enterprise architects, engineering leaders, and delivery teams.

• Present solution vision, target architectures, value cases, and transformation strategies to senior client stakeholders.

Solution Architecture and Innovation

• Define end-to-end architecture for cloud transformation and application modernization engagements.

• Design enterprise landing zones aligned with security, governance, compliance, networking, identity, observability, and operational best practices.

• Architect modernization approaches across a range of patterns including rehost, replatform, refactor, rearchitect, rebuild, and replace.

• Lead architecture for modern application platforms using containers, microservices, APIs, serverless, event-driven integration, and cloud-native services.

• Define reusable infrastructure/application modules, reference architectures, accelerators, and design standards.

• Ensure solutions are scalable, secure, resilient, cost-optimized, and aligned to customer business objectives.

Delivery Oversight and Governance

• Provide architectural leadership throughout program delivery from inception to go-live.

• Guide delivery teams through architecture decisions, design reviews, risk mitigation, and technical governance.

• Oversee implementation quality across cloud foundations, CI/CD, platform engineering, migration, and modernization workstreams.

• Collaborate with delivery managers, engineers, product teams, and customer stakeholders to ensure successful execution.

• Resolve complex architecture and design issues, balancing speed, quality, cost, and business impact.

• Establish governance models, standards, review forums, and best practices to support consistent delivery outcomes.

DevOps, Platform Engineering, and Automation

• Define and drive modern DevOps/DevSecOps practices across build, test, release, deployment, monitoring, and operational support.

• Lead adoption of Infrastructure as Code, policy as code, automated testing, and deployment automation.

• Guide engineering teams on CI/CD frameworks, environment strategies, release governance, and platform reliability.

• Promote reusable engineering assets and modular cloud patterns to improve speed, consistency, and quality.

Cloud Migration and Application Modernization

• Lead cloud migration and modernization strategies for enterprise application portfolios.

• Assess application estates and define migration waves, modernization approaches, and target operating models.

• Design solutions for legacy modernization, platform modernization, data integration, API enablement, and cloud-native transformation.

• Drive adoption of modern engineering practices to improve agility, resilience, scalability, and time-to-market.

• Ensure business continuity, security, compliance, and operational readiness throughout migration and transformation initiatives.

Practice and Capability Leadership

• Contribute to the growth of the cloud/application innovation practice through thought leadership, offerings, reusable assets, and internal capability development.

• Mentor architects, engineers, and consulting teams on architecture standards, modernization patterns, and cloud best practices.

• Stay current with market trends, hyperscaler capabilities, modernization frameworks, and emerging technologies.

• Support capability-building initiatives, internal training, and go-to-market solution development.

Who You Are

Required Experience

• 15+ years of experience in enterprise architecture, application architecture, cloud transformation, or technology consulting roles.

• Strong experience in customer-facing pre-sales, consulting, and solutioning for large and complex transformation engagements.

• Proven track record leading architecture for cloud migrations and application modernization programs.

• Experience overseeing delivery of enterprise-scale cloud transformation initiatives across multiple workstreams and stakeholders.

• Strong understanding of cloud operating models, governance, architecture assurance, and large-scale transformation delivery.

• Demonstrated ability to engage and influence both executive stakeholders and deeply technical teams.

Required Technical Expertise

Core Cloud and Architecture

• Deep expertise in at least one major cloud platform: Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud

• Strong experience designing landing zones including:

  Identity and access management

  Network topology and connectivity

  Security controls and guardrails

  Management groups / account structures / subscriptions

  Logging, monitoring, and observability

  Policy, governance, and compliance

  Cost management and operational readiness

Application Modernization

• Deep knowledge of application modernization strategies and patterns, especially for enterprise legacy estates

• Experience with:

  Microservices architecture

  Containerization and orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes, OpenShift, ECS, AKS, EKS, GKE)

  API-led integration

  Event-driven architecture

  Serverless patterns

  Twelve-factor and cloud-native design principles

  Application decomposition and domain-driven modernization

DevOps and Engineering Excellence

• Strong hands-on understanding of DevOps / DevSecOps practices

• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and automation tooling

• Expertise in Infrastructure as Code and reusable module development using tools such as Terraform, Bicep, CloudFormation, Pulumi, or similar

• Knowledge of testing automation, release orchestration, policy enforcement, and platform engineering principles

• Familiarity with observability, SRE principles, operational resilience, and cloud operations

Migration and Modernization Delivery

• Experience in application portfolio assessment, migration planning, modernization roadmaps, and execution governance

• Strong understanding of migration frameworks, dependency mapping, environment strategy, cutover planning, and risk controls

• Experience modernizing enterprise applications across web, middleware, integration, and supporting platform services

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or related discipline

• Master’s degree preferred

• Relevant cloud certifications such as:

  AWS Certified Solutions Architect / Professional

  Microsoft Azure Solutions Architect Expert

  Google Professional Cloud Architect

  Kubernetes / DevOps / Security certifications

• Experience in consulting, systems integrators, managed services, or large enterprise transformation environments

• Familiarity with FinOps, security architecture, enterprise integration, data modernization, and platform operating models

Being You

The “Kyn” in Kyndryl means kinship, which represents the strong bonds we have with each other, our customers and our communities. We focus on ensuring all Kyndryls feel included and we welcome people of all cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. Even if you don’t meet every requirement, we encourage you to apply. We believe in growth, and we’re excited to see what you can bring. At Kyndryl, employee feedback has told us that our number one driver of employee engagement is belonging. That sense of belonging — being a valued, respected, trusted member of the team — is fundamental to our culture and fueling great experiences for our customers. This dedication to welcoming everyone into our company means that Kyndryl gives you the ability to thrive and contribute to our culture of empathy and shared success. That’s The Kyndryl Way.

What You Can Expect

Your career with us isn’t just a job—it’s an adventure with purpose. We offer a dynamic, hybrid-friendly culture that supports your well-being and empowers you to grow. Our Be Well programs are thoughtfully designed to support your financial, mental, physical, and social health—because we know that when you feel your best, you do your best.

From your very first day, you’ll dive into impactful work that powers the systems our customers rely on every day. You won’t just contribute—you’ll make a difference, tackling meaningful projects that sharpen your skills and fuel your growth.

We’re here to champion your journey. With powerful tools to chart your career path, personalized development goals aligned with your ambitions, and continuous feedback to keep you inspired and on track, you’ll have everything you need to thrive and evolve. You’ll develop in-demand skills to grow your career and achieve your ambitions with access to cutting-edge learning opportunities—from certifications with Microsoft, Google, and Amazon to coaching and hands-on experiences. And through it all, you’ll be part of a culture that values empathy, restless learning, and a devotion to shared success.

We want you to thrive here—and we’re committed to helping you do just that. Ready to make an impact? Join us and help shape what’s next.