Senior Architect (Cloud & FinOps Strategy)

Senior Architect (Cloud & FinOps Strategy)

Position Description
Location: Toronto/Montreal Preferred
Languages: Bilingual (English/French) Preferred
Employment Type: Full-Time

CGI is seeking an experienced Senior Architect to join our growing Architecture & Solutions consulting practice within the Emerging Technologies team.

As a full-time member of CGI, you will become part of a collaborative team of architects, engineers, and consultants delivering enterprise technology solutions for some of Canada's leading public and private sector organizations. While you may be assigned to lead one or more client engagements, you will remain a permanent member of CGI's Architecture practice, collaborating with peers, contributing to reusable reference architectures, and continuously developing your technical and consulting expertise.

In this role, you will help clients translate complex business objectives into scalable, secure, and financially optimized technology strategies. You will design enterprise-grade systems, guide engineering teams through implementation, and ensure that technical solutions align with the client's long-term vision, operational capabilities, and budget.

Success in this role requires a strategic mindset, exceptional communication skills, a deep understanding of enterprise systems, and a strong grasp of cloud economics. You will leverage broad architectural principles and FinOps practices to deliver innovative, pragmatic, and highly cost-efficient solutions across cloud native apps, data platforms, and enterprise infrastructure.

Your future duties and responsibilities
Solutions & Enterprise Architecture

Design end-to-end technical solutions that are secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned with client business objectives and budgets.

Evaluate complex business requirements and translate them into conceptual, logical, and physical architecture designs.

Define integration patterns, API strategies, and data flows for complex enterprise ecosystems (e.g., microservices, event-driven architectures, legacy integrations).

Conduct technology vendor assessments, build-vs-buy analyses, and total cost of ownership (TCO) evaluations.

Cloud Economics & FinOps Strategy

Establish and mature enterprise FinOps practices, bridging the gap between engineering, finance, and business leadership to drive cloud cost accountability.

Architect systems explicitly for cost optimization, using dynamic scaling, spot instances, right sizing, and optimal storage tiering.

Design and implement cost allocation models, showback/chargeback frameworks, and tagging taxonomies to ensure full visibility into cloud spend.

Identify architectural inefficiencies, technical debt, and cloud waste, providing remediation roadmaps.

Strategic Consulting & Roadmapping

Partner with C-level executives and business stakeholders to define IT strategies, technology roadmaps, and digital transformation initiatives.

Assess legacy systems and define pragmatic modernization journeys, including cloud migrations, re-platforming, and refactoring strategies with clear ROI models.

Align technology investments with business value, ensuring architecture support scalability, agility, and competitive advantage.

Technical Leadership & Governance

Lead and mentor engineering and development teams, providing technical direction, oversight, and architectural guardrails throughout the delivery lifecycle.

Establish and enforce engineering standards, best practices, and governance models (e.g., Architecture Review Boards, Cloud Centers of Excellence).

Resolve complex technical escalations and guide teams through critical design trade-offs (performance vs. cost vs. speed to market).

Cloud & Platform Strategy

Design multi-cloud, hybrid, and cloud-native architectures utilizing modern principles (Well-Architected Frameworks).

Guide organizations in adopting Platform Engineering, DevSecOps, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) operating models.

Architect foundational cloud environments (Landing Zones) that balance developer agility with strict security, compliance, and financial controls.

Security & Risk Management

Design systems with a security-first mindset, integrating Zero Trust principles, robust identity management, and data protection strategies.

Identify and mitigate architectural risks, technical debt, and compliance gaps across enterprise systems.

Consulting & Collaboration

Facilitate architecture workshops, FinOps maturity assessments, and technical presentations with diverse stakeholder groups.

Collaborate with CGI practice leads, project managers, and engineers to ensure successful end-to-end solution delivery.

Drive the creation of proposals, technical estimates, statements of work, and go-to-market offerings.

Required qualifications to be successful in this role
Architectural & Cloud Economics Experience

Demonstrated experience as a Solutions Architect, Enterprise Architect, or Principal Engineer designing complex, large-scale technology solutions.

Strong expertise in Cloud Financial Management (FinOps), with a track record of optimizing enterprise cloud spend and establishing financial governance.

Deep background in software engineering, data engineering, or platform/infrastructure engineering before transitioning into an architecture role.

Experience leading enterprise modernization, cloud transformation, or digital strategy initiatives.

Ability to context switch between high-level business/financial strategy and deep technical problem-solving.

Architectural Principles & Methodologies

Experience with concepts such as:

FinOps Principles and the FinOps Lifecycle (Inform, Optimize, Operate)

Cloud Adoption Frameworks & Well-Architected Frameworks (Cost Optimization pillars)

Domain-Driven Design (DDD)

Event-Driven Architecture & Microservices

Zero Trust Security Models

Cross-Domain Technical Expertise (Adjacent Skills)

Broad understanding across multiple engineering disciplines to design cohesive systems, including:

Cloud: Deep understanding of AWS, Azure, or GCP capabilities, billing constructs, compute savings plans, and reserved instances.

Software: Knowledge of modern application architectures, API design, and modern programming paradigms.

Data: Understanding of Data Mesh, Lakehouse architectures, and the cost implications of massive data processing (e.g., Snowflake, Databricks compute costs).

Platform/DevSecOps: Knowledge of Kubernetes, CI/CD strategies, and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) principles.

Professional Skills

Exceptional executive presence and the ability to present complex technical and financial concepts to non-technical business leaders.

Strong negotiation, consensus-building, and conflict-resolution skills.

Strategic thinker with strong analytical and problem-solving capabilities.

Passion for mentoring technical talent and building engineering cultures.

Experience That Will Help You Succeed

The following experience is considered an asset but is not required:

Artificial Intelligence Strategy

Experience architecting solutions that incorporate Machine Learning, Generative AI (LLMs), or RAG securely, including forecasting the highly variable compute costs of AI workloads.

Industry Experience

Domain expertise in Financial Services, Government, Healthcare, Telecommunications, Insurance, Utilities, or other regulated industries.

Certifications

FinOps Certified Practitioner (FOCP) or FinOps Certified Professional.

Cloud Architect Professional Certifications (AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Professional, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect).

Types of Client Engagements

As a member of CGI's Architecture practice, you may lead initiatives such as:

Enterprise FinOps Operating Model Design & Implementation

Cloud Cost Optimization & Architecture Remediation

Enterprise IT Strategy & Roadmap Development

Cloud Center of Excellence (CCoE) Design

Legacy Application Modernization & Re-architecture

Data Platform & AI Strategy

Technologies We Commonly Work With

While architects are technology-agnostic, you will frequently design solutions utilizing:

FinOps & Cloud Management

Cloud Native Billing & Cost Management Tools (AWS Cost Explorer, Azure Cost Management)

Third-Party FinOps Platforms (Apptio Cloudability, Flexera CloudHealth, Spot.io, Kubecost)

Cloud & Infrastructure

AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform

Kubernetes, Serverless (Functions, Lambda)

Integration, Data & AI Ecosystems

API Gateways (Apigee, Kong, Azure API Management)

Databricks, Snowflake

Terraform, GitHub Actions and DevSecOps tooling

Foundational LLMs (OpenAI, Azure AI, AWS Bedrock)

What Success Looks Like

Successful Senior Architects at CGI:

Deliver visionary yet pragmatic technical strategies that drive measurable business outcomes and maximize cloud ROI for clients.

Build trusted advisor relationships with client executives, finance leaders, and technical teams.

Successfully guide cross-functional engineering teams to execute the architectural vision without technical or financial drift.

Contribute reusable reference architectures, cost-optimization playbooks, and thought leadership to the CGI Architecture practice.

Mentor rising engineers and cultivate the next generation of architectural and FinOps talent.

Demonstrate extreme ownership, strategic foresight, and commitment to continuous learning.

Why Join CGI?

Joining CGI means becoming part of a long-term consulting practice focused on helping organizations solve complex technology challenges.

As a member of our Architecture practice, you will collaborate with experienced peers, technical specialists, and consultants while leading enterprise initiatives across a wide range of industries. As client needs evolve, you'll have opportunities to shape strategic engagements, broaden your domain expertise, and continue building your career while remaining part of a collaborative technical community.

At CGI, you'll have opportunities to:

Lead enterprise-scale cloud, FinOps, modernization, data, and AI strategies.

Work across multiple industries and influence diverse technology landscapes.

CGI is providing a reasonable estimate of the pay range for this role. The determination of this range includes factors such as skill set level, geographic market, experience and training, and licenses and certifications. Compensation decisions depend on the facts and circumstances of each case. A reasonable estimate of the current range is $95,000-$145,000. This role is a future opportunity.

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Together, as owners, let’s turn meaningful insights into action.

Life at CGI is rooted in ownership, teamwork, respect and belonging. Here, you’ll reach your full potential because…

You are invited to be an owner from day 1 as we work together to bring our Dream to life. That’s why we call ourselves CGI Partners rather than employees. We benefit from our collective success and actively shape our company’s strategy and direction.

Your work creates value. You’ll develop innovative solutions and build relationships with teammates and clients while accessing global capabilities to scale your ideas, embrace new opportunities, and benefit from expansive industry and technology expertise.

You’ll shape your career by joining a company built to grow and last. You’ll be supported by leaders who care about your health and well-being and provide you with opportunities to deepen your skills and broaden your horizons.

At CGI, we value the strength that diversity brings and are committed to fostering a workplace where everyone belongs. We collaborate with our clients to build more inclusive communities and empower all CGI partners to thrive. As an equal-opportunity employer, being able to perform your best during the recruitment process is important to us. If you require an accommodation, please inform your recruiter.

That same commitment to fairness extends to how we use technology. To support our recruitment team, AI tools may be used to help assess applications though they never replace human judgement. All hiring decisions remain entirely in the hands of our recruitment professionals.

To learn more about accessibility at CGI, contact us via email . Please note that this email is strictly for accessibility requests and cannot be used for application status inquiries.

Come join our team—one of the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world.