Cloud Architect

Vacancy Notice 1650

INTERPOL is the world’s largest international police organization, with 196 Member Countries. Created in 1923, it facilitates cross-border police co-operation, and supports and assists all organizations, authorities, and services whose mission is to prevent or combat international crime. 

INTERPOL strives to achieve a diverse and inclusive workforce and welcomes applications from individuals with diverse backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. To achieve our Diversity goals, we encourage applications from women and nationals of under/unrepresented member countries who are passionate about our mission. INTERPOL’s recruitment process is merit-based hence all hiring decisions are made considering the applicant’s qualifications and the needs of the Organization.

Job Title: Cloud Architect    
Reporting To: Head of Engineering and Solution Design
Location: Lyon
Type of contract: Fixed-term Contract
Duration (in months): 36.00*
Grade: 4   
Number of post: 1
Level of Security screening:  Enhanced
Deadline for application: 16 November 2026

Conditions applying for all candidates

Only professional experience for which candidates can provide official proof of employment will be considered. Candidates could be requested to provide copies of such official documents prior to interviews/test.

* Subsequent extension to this post will be subject to the terms of the Organization’s Staff Manual, to satisfactory performance and to availability of funds.

Tests/interviews in connection to this selection procedure will take place approximately 1/3 weeks after the deadline for applications. Applicants are kindly requested to plan their availability during this period accordingly, in case they are short-listed.

​Selected candidates will be expected to report for duty approximately one to three months after receiving an offer of employment at the latest.

This selection exercise may be used to generate a reserve list of suitable candidates that may be used to address Organization's similar staffing needs in the future.

SUMMARY OF THE ASSIGNED DUTIES, INCLUDING GOALS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE POST

As part of the General Secretariat of INTERPOL, the world’s largest International Criminal Police Organization, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Executive Directorate delivers trusted, secure, and innovative digital platforms and services that enable global police cooperation.

ICT constitutes the technological backbone of the Organization, providing the trusted, secure, and innovative platforms and services that allow law enforcement agencies across member countries to collaborate effectively and securely.

Within this context, the Cloud Ready Architect ensures the consistency, scalability, and sustainability of cloud-native and hybrid infrastructures, aligned with ICT strategy and governance. Reporting to the Head of Engineering and Solution Design, the role acts as a Design Authority for public and private cloud architectures, governing key technical decisions across hybrid environments.

The Cloud Ready Architect provides technical leadership for the Organization’s cloud transformation, ensuring architectures meet enterprise standards for reliability, security, and operability. The role supports Solution Architects through design validation, assists Operations teams as an escalation point during major incidents, and promotes a cloud-first, automation-driven engineering culture across ICT.

PRINCIPAL DUTIES AND ACTIVITIES

DUTY 1 - Conception

• Define and validate the technical architecture of cloud-native and hybrid systems, ensuring alignment with business needs, scalability, and security.
• Serve as Design Authority for cloud platforms and automation pipelines.
• Review and approve infrastructure designs (Kubernetes, EKS, Rancher, OpenShift, Terraform, Helm, etc.) for compliance with enterprise standards.
• Contribute to architectural guidelines, technical evaluations, and tenders related to cloud infrastructure.
• Align all designs with Enterprise Architecture, Security Assurance, and DevSecOps governance frameworks.

DUTY 2 - Administration

• Define and enforce technical standards, reference architectures, and configuration baselines for all cloud infrastructures.
• Supervise documentation and ensure consistency of the cloud architecture landscape.
• Guarantee traceability and version control across multi-environment deployments.
• Promote declarative, automated, and immutable infrastructure practices.

DUTY 3 - Advice, Support and Escalation

• Provide expert guidance, mentoring, and technical leadership to Solution Architects, Engineers, and Operations.
• Occasionally support Operations and Engineering teams during major service activities or exceptional situations, including major incidents and/or the launch of new services (Go Live!). Any participation outside normal working hours will be discussed and agreed in advance with the line manager.
• Support the review and validation of solution designs to ensure alignment with approved reference architectures.
• Act as an escalation point and participate in incident troubleshooting, diagnostics, and recovery during major events impacting cloud platforms.
• Lead proofs of concept  for emerging technologies such as multi-cluster federation, workload identity, and service mesh adoption.
• Identify training and upskilling needs to strengthen organizational expertise in cloud-native and DevSecOps practices.

DUTY 4 - Communication and Governance

• Maintain architectural coherence across Engineering, Enterprise Architecture, Security Assurance, and Operations.
• Define and maintain architecture standards, blueprints, and patterns for hybrid cloud environments.
• Conduct design reviews, ensure governance compliance, and provide architectural sign-off.
• Promote collaboration and documentation through Architecture Decision Records (ADRs) and technical communities of practice.
• Contribute to the Platform Governance Framework to ensure traceable and business-aligned decisions.

Perform any other duties as required by the hierarchy.

QUALIFICATIONS, COMPETENCIES AND SKILLS

Education and qualification required:

• University degree or equivalent (three to four years of higher education) in a relevant domain.
• Certifications such as CKA / CKAD / CKS, AWS Certified Solutions Architect, or HashiCorp Terraform Associate are highly valued.
• ITIL Foundation or equivalent service-management certification appreciated.

Experience required:

• Minimum five years of experience in a large and complex IT enterprise environment.
• Proven experience as a Design Authority or Principal Architect for public and private cloud infrastructures.
• Demonstrated expertise in Kubernetes architecture, Infrastructure Automation, DevSecOps pipelines, and Infrastructure as Code.
• Practical experience providing escalation support for cloud platforms or infrastructure incidents.
• Experience with hybrid and multi-cloud architectures, GitOps workflows, and Zero-Trust / Policy-as-Code frameworks.
• Familiarity with Change, Configuration, and Incident Management processes.

Languages:

• Fluency in English.
• Working knowledge in French is highly desirable.
• Knowledge of a third official working language of the Organization (Arabic, or Spanish) would be an additional asset.

Abilities required

• Strong leadership and governance mindset as Design Authority.
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills, particularly under pressure.
• Ability to lead complex investigations during incidents and provide sound, rapid decisions.
• Excellent interpersonal and communication skills in a multicultural environment.
• Methodical and results-oriented, able to manage multiple complex initiatives simultaneously.
• Strong sense of responsibility, adaptability, and collaborative approach.

Technical proficiency (Desirable Key Competencies)

• Proficiency or familiarity with most of the following technologies and practices:
• Kubernetes (on-prem bare-metal and virtualized), Rancher, EKS, OpenShift
• Helm, Kustomize, Terraform, Ansible, Pulumi
• Spinnaker, ArgoCD, Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD
• Istio, Cilium, Envoy, ingress and egress gateway architectures
• Vault, OPA/Gatekeeper, Kyverno, RBAC and Policy-as-Code controls
• Prometheus, Loki, Grafana, Jaeger, Tempo (observability stacks)
• AWS, Azure, GCP, and on-prem private-cloud integration
• GitOps, Infrastructure as Code, Zero-Trust, and DevSecOps frameworks
• Linux administration and container runtimes (containerd, CRI-O)
• Security and compliance frameworks (CIS, NIST 800-207, ISO 27001)

Additional desired specific skills on public cloud/AWS

Competencies in one or more of the following areas, with specific reference to AWS, are highly desirable and will be considered an asset: 

• Design of AWS Landing Zones (multi-account strategy, AWS Organizations, SCPs, baseline security and governance). 

• AWS Networking Architecture (VPC design, subnetting, routing, Transit Gateway, PrivateLink, ingress/egress patterns). 

• Hybrid Connectivity (VPN, Direct Connect, resilient connectivity patterns, on-prem integration). 

• Identity & Access Management (IAM roles/policies, federation with enterprise IdP, least privilege, workload identity). 

• Cloud Security Architecture (security-by-design, guardrails, encryption, integration with AWS-native security services). 

• Multi-Account Governance & Policy Enforcement (SCPs, tagging strategies, policy-as-code, compliance controls). 

• Infrastructure as Code on AWS (Terraform, CloudFormation, automation, immutable infrastructure practices). 

• Cloud-Native Service Design (EC2, EKS, S3, RDS, serverless patterns) and trade-offs vs platform abstraction. 

• High Availability & Resilience Design (multi-AZ, multi-region strategies, disaster recovery patterns). 

• Observability in AWS (CloudWatch, logging, metrics, tracing, integration with enterprise observability stacks). 

• Cost Management & FinOps (cost allocation, tagging, budgets, optimization, rightsizing strategies). 

• DevSecOps Integration in AWS (secure CI/CD pipelines, artifact management, supply chain security). 

• Zero Trust & Network Segmentation (identity-aware access, micro-segmentation, secure service exposure). 

• Architecture Governance & Standards (reference architectures, design reviews, compliance with enterprise frameworks).