Cloud Principal Architect - Application Innovation, Toronto

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 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 …