Job description template

Cloud Infrastructure Architect

Build and evolve secure, reliable cloud infrastructure that enables product teams to ship faster. Own architecture decisions for core services, automate operations, and improve system resilience and cost efficiency while meeting security and compliance requirements.

Responsibilities

Design cloud infrastructure architectures for new and existing systems across compute, networking, storage, and identity
Define and review infrastructure-as-code standards and reusable patterns for teams to adopt safely
Collaborate with application and security stakeholders to ensure services meet availability, performance, and security goals
Implement and improve CI/CD-ready infrastructure workflows, including environment provisioning and deployment guardrails
Drive reliability practices such as incident readiness, runbooks, monitoring coverage, and fault-tolerant design
Optimize cloud spend through capacity planning, right-sizing, and workload-level cost governance
Lead technical investigations for production issues and conduct post-incident improvements to prevent recurrence

Must-have qualifications

Hands-on experience designing production cloud infrastructure architectures
Strong infrastructure-as-code experience (e.g., Terraform or equivalent) with repeatable, version-controlled modules
Proven knowledge of cloud networking and identity/security controls (e.g., VPC/VNet, routing, IAM, least privilege)
Operational experience with observability and reliability practices (monitoring, alerting, incident response)
Experience improving availability and resilience using redundancy, backups, and disaster recovery patterns

Nice to have

Experience with container platforms and orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes) in production
Knowledge of cloud security/compliance frameworks and implementing audit-ready controls

What success looks like in 12 months

Deliver repeatable infrastructure foundations using infrastructure-as-code
Improve resilience and reduce production incidents
Strengthen observability coverage and operational readiness
Enhance security and least-privilege access controls
Optimize cloud costs while maintaining performance and reliability

Logistics

Full-time (40 hours a week), remote from Latin America.
Working hours overlap with US business hours.

About the company

[About your company: what you build, your stage and team size]

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Interview scorecard

Score every candidate against the same bar

Architect and operationalize secure, scalable cloud infrastructure that improves reliability, security posture, and developer throughput.

Outcomes to measure

What this hire should deliver in the first year. Replace [N] with your own targets.

Deliver repeatable infrastructure foundations using infrastructure-as-code. Measure: Standardize and ship [N] reusable infrastructure modules/patterns; achieve [X]% adoption across relevant projects
Improve resilience and reduce production incidents. Measure: Reduce high-severity incidents by [X]%; improve mean time to recovery (MTTR) by [X]% for impacted services
Strengthen observability coverage and operational readiness. Measure: Increase service-level monitoring coverage to [X]% of critical dependencies; ensure [N] runbooks and alert playbooks are documented and kept current
Enhance security and least-privilege access controls. Measure: Reduce IAM policy over-permission findings by [X]% and complete [N] security hardening reviews with tracked remediations
Optimize cloud costs while maintaining performance and reliability. Measure: Reduce monthly infrastructure spend by [X]% for targeted workloads without violating SLO/SLA guardrails

Competencies and weights

What to evaluate, how much it counts and what a strong answer looks like.

Cloud architecture design · 28%
The role requires independent, production-grade design decisions across compute, networking, storage, and identity. Evaluated in Round 1.

Weak: Describes components at a high level but struggles to justify tradeoffs or define clear architecture constraints.
Meets the bar: Designs architectures that address functional needs and non-functional requirements with reasonable tradeoffs and documented assumptions.
Strong: Produces robust, production-ready architectures with clear tradeoffs, explicit failure modes, and measurable reliability/security targets.

Infrastructure as code · 22%
Reusable, version-controlled infrastructure-as-code is essential to scale safe changes and reduce operational risk. Evaluated in Round 1.

Weak: Writes ad-hoc automation without strong module boundaries, version control discipline, or repeatability.
Meets the bar: Builds modular infrastructure-as-code that is repeatable across environments and supports safe changes.
Strong: Creates well-structured, reusable modules with clear interfaces, guardrails (validation/policy), and consistent deployment workflows that teams can adopt confidently.

Networking and identity security · 20%
Secure cloud connectivity and least-privilege identity are foundational to production readiness. Evaluated in Round 2.

Weak: Provides generic explanations of security concepts without connecting them to specific controls and risks.
Meets the bar: Applies core networking and identity controls with least privilege and supports secure segmentation and access patterns.
Strong: Designs and validates secure network/identity architectures, anticipates attack paths, and articulates how controls reduce specific threats and meet compliance expectations.

Observability and reliability · 15%
The architect must drive monitoring/alerting and reliability improvements that reduce incident impact. Evaluated in Round 2.

Weak: Relies on reactive troubleshooting and lacks a structured approach to monitoring or alert tuning.
Meets the bar: Implements monitoring, alerting, and operational practices aligned to service objectives and incident workflows.
Strong: Designs end-to-end observability (signals, dashboards, alerting strategy) and reliability improvements that demonstrably reduce time to detect and recover.

Resilience and DR · 10%
Resilience and disaster recovery capabilities are required to meet availability and continuity goals. Evaluated in Round 3.

Weak: Suggests backups/redundancy generally but cannot explain RTO/RPO tradeoffs or testing approach.
Meets the bar: Applies standard redundancy, backup, and DR patterns with clear recovery objectives and basic validation.
Strong: Defines concrete RTO/RPO targets, designs for realistic failure scenarios, and validates recovery through testing and continuous improvement.

Independent technical leadership · 5%
Mid-level independence is expected: the role should move work forward with clear decision-making and stakeholder collaboration. Evaluated in Round 3.

Weak: Needs significant direction to proceed and struggles to align others on decisions.
Meets the bar: Leads well-defined architecture work streams independently and communicates tradeoffs and plans clearly.
Strong: Drives decisions end-to-end, proactively coordinates stakeholders, and sets a clear technical direction that others can execute against.

Interview questions

Questions for every interview round

Each round has an owner, a time box and questions that test the competencies above.

Round 1: Cloud foundation deep dive
Cloud Infrastructure Lead · 60 min

Walk through a production cloud architecture you designed end-to-end. What were the key tradeoffs and non-functional requirements (availability, latency, security, scalability)?
Describe how you would structure infrastructure-as-code for a multi-environment setup (dev/staging/prod). How do you keep modules reusable and changes safe?
Give an example of an architectural decision you made when requirements were ambiguous. How did you converge on a solution and communicate assumptions?
How do you handle configuration drift and ensure infrastructure changes are consistently applied across environments?

Round 2: Security, networking, and operations
Security & Reliability Engineer · 60 min

Explain how you design secure network segmentation (e.g., private/public subnets, routing, access paths). What would you validate in a review?
Describe an identity and access model you implemented (IAM). How did you apply least privilege and organize roles/policies for safe operations?
How have you implemented monitoring and alerting for reliability? Talk about signal selection, alert thresholds, and reducing alert noise.
Tell us about a production incident you helped resolve. What did you use for diagnosis, and what improvements did you make afterward?

Round 3: Resilience and autonomy
Engineering Manager · 60 min

Discuss a resilience or disaster recovery design you implemented (redundancy, backups, multi-AZ/region). What were your RTO/RPO targets and how did you test recovery?
How do you design for failure modes (e.g., dependency outages, partial outages, throttling)? Provide a concrete example.
Describe a time you led a well-defined infrastructure initiative independently. What decisions did you own, and how did you ensure stakeholders were aligned?
What metrics or evidence would you use to show your infrastructure improvements are working (reliability, security posture, cost, or developer throughput)?

Red flags to watch for

Overly theoretical answers without concrete production experience (no specific architecture decisions, controls, or reliability/incident examples)
Infrastructure-as-code described as scripts/manual steps without modularity, repeatability, or safe change management
Inability to explain how observability or alerting strategies connect to outcomes like MTTR or incident detection
Weak understanding of security/identity and networking controls (e.g., cannot discuss least privilege, segmentation, or validation in reviews)
No ability to articulate resilience/DR tradeoffs or how recovery was validated in practice

How much does it cost to hire a Cloud Infrastructure Architect in Latin America?

In 2026, a senior Cloud Infrastructure Architect in Latin America costs $7,875 to $9,000 a month all-in, versus $16,625 in the US: up to 53% less. Mid-level starts at $5,125.

Country

Mid-level

Senior

Argentina

$5,125

$7,875

Brazil

$5,750

$8,625

Colombia

$5,125

$7,875

Mexico

$6,000

$9,000

United States

$13,875

$16,625

Monthly cost in USD, all-in: the talent's salary plus Teilur's flat 20% fee, from our 2026 rates. The United States row shows what the same role typically costs there.

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Frequently asked questions

What does a Cloud Infrastructure Architect do?

Typical responsibilities include: design cloud infrastructure architectures for new and existing systems across compute, networking, storage, and identity; define and review infrastructure-as-code standards and reusable patterns for teams to adopt safely; collaborate with application and security stakeholders to ensure services meet availability, performance, and security goals. The full list is in the template above.

How much does it cost to hire a Cloud Infrastructure Architect in Latin America?

In 2026, a senior Cloud Infrastructure Architect in Latin America costs $7,875 to $9,000 a month all-in, versus $16,625 in the US: up to 53% less. Mid-level starts at $5,125.

Can I customize this Cloud Infrastructure Architect job description?

Yes. Teilur's free Job Description & Scorecard Generator rewrites it for your stack, seniority, time zone and hiring urgency in about 15 seconds. No sign-up needed.

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Cloud Infrastructure Architect Job Description Template