Cloud Data Architect

**This position is contingent upon contract award.**

Leidos is seeking a Cloud Data Architect to support the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Summit Advanced Tooling, Lakehouse, and Artificial Intelligence Services (ATLAS) program.

Remote work within CONUS is subject to VA security and system-access requirements. Must support Eastern Time collaboration and applicable production coverage. Occasional after-hours or weekend support may be required for critical incidents or planned maintenance.

The architect leads Summit cloud and data platform architecture, establishes approved technical patterns, and coordinates enterprise architecture, interoperability, security, and compliance decisions with VA stakeholders.

Primary Responsibilities

• Lead and document the Summit Enterprise Reference Architecture and roadmap across Azure-based data, analytics, integration, and platform services based upon policy-first rules and guardrails.
• Define and steward approved cloud, lakehouse patterns, and data management standards for ingestion, storage, data modeling, interoperability, metadata, access controls, and platform operations.
• Serve as the primary technical interface to VA architecture governance and the Architecture Review Board (ARB); prepare architecture decision records and manage design exceptions.
• Design and review Azure cloud and hybrid integration patterns, including identity, networking, segmentation, routing, trust boundaries, and secure connectivity to adjacent VA platforms.
• Partner with security and compliance leads to align architecture with Zero Trust, NIST 800-53, RMF/ATO, security-impact analysis, and VA enterprise cloud requirements.
• Provide architecture guidance to solution architects, data engineers, DevSecOps teams, and product leaders; review complex designs for scalability, interoperability, resilience, and cost.
• Guide cloud transition options and modernization decisions, including Azure Government/Commercial considerations, migration risks, and service continuity.
• Support transition-in from the government and  incumbent contractor by validating current-state architecture, documentation, dependencies, technical debt, and operational handover.

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related discipline and with 15+ years of extensive relevant cloud/data architecture experience; final experience threshold to be validated against the approved labor category.
• Demonstrated expertise designing and integrating Microsoft Azure data environments, including experience with Azure Data Lake Storage, Azure Data Factory, and Azure Databricks or comparable enterprise data services.
• Demonstrated expertise managing and documenting technical architecture, security/compliance strategies, and data platform engineering
• Experience designing complex enterprise data architectures, cloud/hybrid integration, identity and access patterns, and scalable data services.
• Working knowledge of federal security controls, secure architecture reviews, and operational compliance requirements.
• Ability to lead technical reviews, document architectural decisions, and communicate tradeoffs with Government and multidisciplinary engineering stakeholders.
• Experienced in  collaboration with government stakeholders, presenting architectural designs and policies, and securing approvals for implementation.
• Ability to obtain and maintain required VA Public Trust suitability (Tier 2/Moderate Risk) and meet VA system-access requirements.

Preferred Qualifications

• Highly preferred: Direct experience with the VA Summit Data Platform, VA Enterprise Cloud, or adjacent VA enterprise analytics platforms.
• Hands-on experience with Delta Lake/lakehouse architectures, including data modeling, optimization, governance, and performance tuning.
• Experience with federated data access, metadata catalogs, and governance technologies such as Starburst, Collibra, and Immuta, as well as high-performance data streaming and integration technologies such as Kafka.
• Experience with VA or other federal ATO/RMF processes, NIST 800-53, Zero Trust, and Azure landing-zone security.
• Certifications: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure Security Engineer Associate, and/or relevant cloud or data architecture certification.

If you're looking for comfort, keep scrolling. At Leidos, we outthink, outbuild, and outpace the status quo — because the mission demands it. We're not hiring followers. We're recruiting the ones who disrupt, provoke, and refuse to fail. Step 10 is ancient history. We're already at step 30 — and moving faster than anyone else dares.

Original Posting:

Pay Range:

The Leidos pay range for this job level is a general guideline only and not a guarantee of compensation or salary. Additional factors considered in extending an offer include (but are not limited to) responsibilities of the job, education, experience, knowledge, skills, and abilities, as well as internal equity, alignment with market data, applicable bargaining agreement (if any), or other law.