To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty and responsibility satisfactorily. Essential duties and responsibilities include the following (other duties and responsibilities may also be assigned):
Leads and contributes to GIS cloud Enterprise Architecture workshops and related discussions involving utility customers and prepares relevant presentation content and questions in advance.
Leads discussions to support client requirements for cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-on-premise architectures.
Provides overall technical cloud expertise for system design, implementation, assessment, consulting, hosting, and managed service engagements.
Serves as a member of the UDC Information Technology (IT) team, supporting internal cloud technology needs based on a targeted billable-overhead ratio.
Reads client requirements, RFPs, RFIs, and RFQs to identify cloud opportunities, and then subsequently develops the cloud solution, statement of work, level of effort, and project schedule to be included in proposals in a timely manner.
Manages technical cloud deliverables for projects and the Practice Area, including architectural diagrams, use-cases, requirements gathering, solution design, test cases, administration guides, deployment manuals, and other specification documentation.
Facilitates and participates in GIS cloud road mapping workshops for utility customers.
Builds high-level and detailed cloud Enterprise Architecture diagrams that include specifying all required software, hardware, network, database and enterprise geodatabase, storage, security, integration, and other enterprise components.
Designs cloud-native and cloud-hosted database solutions, including enterprise geodatabases.
Authors UDC’s system architecture specification document for cloud deployments that encompasses a standard set of architecture views and implementation release schedule.
Validates cloud requirements, determines system configuration, and estimates system sizing using a variety of tools and in alignment with industry standards and best practices.
Generates comprehensive cost estimates and Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) budgetary estimates using the native cloud providers’ configuration tools for competitive and sole source proposals around Phase 0 and business case road mapping requests from clients that cover all DevOps environments, production environments, and temporary environments such as those used for data migration. Estimates need to include pricing to support our clients in securing funding and justifying Return on Investment (ROI) for high availability and business continuity requirements that involve multi-zone and multi-region deployments which may be based on virtual machines or containers.
Provides technical guidance and consulting for UDC’s clients to embrace security in the cloud by taking advantage of services such as AWS Virtual Private Clouds (VPC), Microsoft Azure Virtual Networks (VNet), and other similar solutions from leading cloud providers. Similarly, educates UDC’s clients on what it takes to create and manage a private cloud from a network communications and administration standpoint.
Provides technical architecture direction for software development teams, quality assurance personnel, and training staff when required.
Ensures cloud solutions and deliverables are thoroughly tested, vetted, reviewed, and meeting customer expectations.
Creates and executes GIS cloud system tuning and system threshold testing procedures, analyzes resulting performance metrics, and develops recommendations.
Trains UDC onshore and offshore personnel to manage GIS cloud infrastructure resources to support managed service engagements.
Educates others, internally and externally, on UDC’s Enterprise Architecture framework and methodologies pertaining to cloud technologies.
Stays up to date on partner, competitor, and market-leading cloud architectures that are industry-proven, best practice, robust, and innovative to ensure UDC is providing adequate performance along with the correct parameters to support hardware scaling through design and implementation.
Partners with internal staff, business partners, and customers to build relationships and elevate UDC’s presence and reputation in the GIS cloud market.
Serves as a mentor for others interested in cloud technologies to assist with knowledge transfer and career growth opportunities.
Supervisory Responsibilities
This job has no supervisory responsibilities.
Qualifications
To perform this job successfully and perform each essential duty and responsibility satisfactorily, an individual should possess a specific set of qualifications. The qualifications listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.
Ability to provide technical GIS cloud leadership for system design, implementation, assessment, consulting, hosting, and managed service engagements.
Capacity to review and interpret a customer’s requirements and generate a GIS cloud solution to meet those requirements in a timely manner.
Proven record of designing, sizing, configuring, tuning, and supporting GIS cloud systems in enterprise production environments, preferably in the utility industry.
In-depth understanding of the concepts, tools, and best practices pertaining to cloud technologies and cloud-native services that involve the following types of resources for private cloud, on-premises, and hybrid environments:
Virtual servers, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), and serverless cloud compute resources.
Virtual Local Area Networks (VLANs), firewalls, and security policies.
Identity and Access Management (IAM).
Network and application load balancers and other reverse proxies.
Private and public Domain Name Services (DNS).
Virtual Private Networks (VPN).
Virtualization platforms such as Citrix Hypervisor or VMware ESXi / vSphere.
Databases, file shares, and other storage repositories.
Batch jobs, scheduled processes, automated tasks, and replication.
High availability, redundancy, clustering, failover, and disaster recovery.
Aptitude in identifying single points of failure throughout an architecture and recommending specific measures to reduce risk of system outages.
Knowledge of Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) technologies from major vendors such as NVIDIA and AMD.
Excellent interpersonal, professional, and customer relations skills.
Excellent written and oral/verbal communication skills with demonstrated proficiency in speaking, writing, and reading by forming complete and proper sentences as well as following grammar and punctuation rules.
Skilled listener who exhibits patience and has a genuine desire to hear about and solve problems.
Possesses a high degree of personal and professional integrity.
Education and Certificates
Bachelor's Degree from an accredited postsecondary institution in Information Technology, Computer Science, Systems Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Networks, Cloud Engineering, or other related discipline.
Master’s Degree from an accredited higher education institution in Information Technology, Computer Science, Systems Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Networks, Cloud Engineering, or other related disciplines.
Significant work experience may be eligible for substitution, at UDC’s discretion, for a higher education degree.
Experience
11-16 years of work experience in cloud consulting and large-scale technology projects involving cloud technologies on AWS or Microsoft Azure, preferably for utility customers.
6-11 years of work experience in enterprise GIS with a combination of system design, Enterprise Architecture, system implementation, and system administration.
Thorough background in deploying, configuring, administering, and supporting Esri ArcGIS products, including ArcGIS Enterprise, ArcGIS Pro, and ArcGIS Online.
Hands-on experience administering Kubernetes, Docker, microservices, and other containerization (including container ingress) solutions in the cloud, as well as proficiency in one or more cloud deployment orchestration concepts and tools such as ArcGIS Cloud Builder, CloudFormation, Puppet, Chef, or Terraform.
In-depth experience with cloud security configuration as well as a thorough understanding of the related options and best practices.
Enterprise configuration experience with Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) technologies from major vendors such as NVIDIA and AMD.
Solid understanding of Layer 4 and Layer 7 load balancing and reverse proxy solutions such as F5 BIG-IP, NGINX, Citrix ADC (NetScaler), CloudFare, Azure Application Gateway, AWS Elastic Load Balancer.
Prior experience with Esri and open-source cloud monitoring and tuning tools including ArcGIS Enterprise Manager, ArcGIS Monitor, Prometheus, or CloudWatch (EventBridge).
Recent experience with cloud-based integration tools such as Kafka, Boomi, and MuleSoft is desired but not required.
Frameworks and Methodologies
