Senior Architect with Strong Cloud (GCP) Experience and Security, for pharmacy and healthcare application

Our client, Canada's largest retailer, is seeking a highly skilled and experienced Senior Solutions Architect for a contract engagement to modernize our client's core cloud infrastructure and enterprise applications. This is a key strategic role in which you will drive the architecture to enhance and optimize our client's cloud environments, aligning them with the latest capabilities of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and cloud-native design principles.

You will be an integral part of our client’s architecture team, ensuring consistency, best practices, and a technically sound solution across the enterprise. In this role, you will tackle complex challenges by providing architectural guidance and designing large-scale enhancements with the Pharmacy and Healthcare Technology team. You will be instrumental in evolving our client’s current cloud solutions, working closely with the application and SRE engineering teams to ensure the applications meet technical requirements and are positioned for substantial growth in scalability, security, and performance.

Join a highly collaborative architecture team supporting mission-critical healthcare and pharmacy solutions requiring knowledge of Protected Health Information (PHI) compliance. This role is focused on leading cloud architecture design, ensuring multi-layered security and data encryption standards across major delivery programs. Work closely with application, delivery, SRE, and networking teams to co-develop secure, compliant cloud solutions embedded within ongoing delivery efforts. This is a senior-level role with visibility across complex, large-scale projects within a dynamic environment.

Start Date: ASAP

End Date: December 2026, with multi-year extension

Location: North York or Brampton, 1-2 days per week as needed

What You'll Do:

• Lead the architectural design and implementation for the modernization of the enterprise platform, ensuring a secure, scalable, and high-performance cloud solution.
• Analyze existing on-premise or legacy cloud implementations and design a roadmap for migration to a standardized, cloud-native architecture on GCP.
• Support the engineering requirements of legacy components and develop strategies for their modernization, refactoring, and migration.
• Defend architectural decisions and present technical designs to the Solution Review Board (SRB) and the Technical Review Board (TRB), ensuring alignment with Delivery/DevOps, Security, Privacy, SRE, Operations, and Analytics standards.
• Enable organizational needs by leveraging appropriate cloud platform frameworks, containerization, and technology stacks.
• Participate in and lead design discussions focused on cloud computing best practices, scalability, and network implementation.
• Architect and implement robust network topologies and integrate comprehensive security policies within the cloud platform and its connected applications.
• Provide expertise in cloud cost optimization (FinOps) to help manage and forecast cloud operating expenses.
• Architect and explain complex system interactions, including data flows, network routing, APIs, and microservices integration methods.
• Architect, develop, and maintain production-grade, highly available solutions within a multi-cloud or hybrid environment.
• Continuously improve your client’s knowledge of the latest GCP trends, network security updates, and infrastructure roadmaps.

What You Bring:

• Proven experience with large-scale modernization projects, specifically migrating complex enterprise workloads to Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
• Deep understanding of Cloud Technology, including hands-on expertise with GCP compute, storage, and serverless offerings, as well as multi-cloud architecture and design.
• Advanced Container Management skills, specifically architecting and operating solutions using Docker and Kubernetes (GKE).
• Network Architecture Expertise encompassing VPC design, Cloud DNS, Global Load Balancing, Cloud Interconnect/VPN, zero-trust network access, transit gateways, and complex peering and routing configurations.
• Comprehensive Security Architecture skills covering Identity and Access Management (IAM), Authentication and Authorization (OAuth 2.0, OIDC, SAML), Platform Security, data encryption (KMS, Secret Manager), and perimeter security (WAF, Cloud Armor).
• Hands-on experience with API and Microservices design, including integration patterns, REST, and SOAP APIs.
• Integration Architecture proficiency involving Enterprise Integration Patterns, Event-driven architecture, and synchronous/asynchronous messaging (e.g., Pub/Sub, Kafka).
• Data Architecture skills, including SQL and No-SQL database design, ETL pipelines, and Data Migration and Transformation strategies.
• Experience navigating organizational governance and presenting to an Architecture Review Board or Solution Review Board (SRB).
• Strong consultative, communication, and facilitation skills (Design Thinking, Agile Facilitation, etc.).
• Exceptional understanding of non-functional requirements, including security, concurrency, high availability, failover, and business continuity planning.
• Familiarity with Solution Architecture Methodologies within a TOGAF or Agile environment.
• Relevant cloud architecture certifications (e.g., Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect) are a strong asset.

Must Haves:

• 10+ years of architecture experience, 5+ years experience in Cloud, GCP preferred
• Strong background in security architecture supporting PHI compliance and data encryption
• Excellent communication skills, in both technical and non-technical communication and as well as the ability to present to senior leadership and stakeholders
• Experience collaborating with application delivery, SRE, and networking teams within healthcare or pharmacy domains

Nice to Have:

• Background in pharmacy, online retail, or banking systems