Senior Cloud Architect

Company Overview

Robots & Pencils is an applied AI engineering firm building the next frontier of business architecture. We design and ship AI co-workers that integrate into enterprise operations and deliver measurable results for our clients. We're all in on AWS, combining deep UX capability with senior engineering talent to get AI into production fast and keep it there. 
We’ve earned the trust of leaders across Consumer Products and Retail, Education, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare, and Manufacturing and more, and earned a reputation as the nimble alternative to traditional global systems integrators. Founded in 2009, with delivery centers in Canada, the United States, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, we are smaller, faster, and more senior by design. Our teams average 15+ years of experience. We move fast, sweat the details, and build things that actually ship.

Position Overview

We’re looking for a Senior Cloud Application Architect to contribute to the design and delivery of cloud-native applications on AWS, growing into architectural ownership while staying close to the code. This is a role for someone who enjoys hands-on development and wants to sharpen the judgment that comes from designing services, APIs, and event flows that have to run reliably in production. You’ll help decompose systems into well-bounded services, shape serverless and container-based deployments, and make the day-to-day calls that keep applications scalable, secure, and maintainable.

In this role, you will work as a delivery-embedded contributor on a cross-functional team building real systems for real clients. You’ll collaborate closely with senior architects, engineers, and product partners to translate requirements into sound application architecture, implement infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines, and integrate AI services where they add value. Along the way you’ll develop the technical instincts that come from shipping things that matter and learn to weigh tradeoffs across cost, performance, resilience, and team velocity.

Why This Role Matters

At Robots & Pencils, we design AI systems for a human world. Our name says it all. Robots and pencils means engineering paired with creativity, because every agent we ship has to work for real people in real workflows. That balance is baked into how we operate. 
 
Every role here contributes directly to that mission. Here, you shape how AI systems integrate into enterprise operations, how teams move at real velocity, and how products create measurable impact for clients and the people they serve. We ship production-ready AI in 30 to 45 days. That pace demands people who take ownership, lead with craft, and care deeply about what they put their name on.

What You’ll Do

Craft & Delivery

• Contribute to the design of cloud-native applications, helping define service boundaries, API contracts, and data flows on AWS

• Build and deploy microservices and serverless functions using containers and managed compute

• Implement event-driven patterns and asynchronous messaging between services 

• Design and implement APIs across protocols and gateways

• Support infrastructure as code and CI/CD pipelines that make deployments repeatable and safe

• Implement observability, scalability, and resilience practices so applications stay healthy under load

• Apply AWS Well-Architected practices for security, reliability, and cost across the services you build

• Build and integrate AI and LLM services into cloud applications, including RAG and inference workflows

• Bring an AI-forward mindset to your daily work, using tools like Claude, Cursor, and other modern AI assistants to ship higher-quality work at pace

Collaboration & Communication

• Collaborate with engineers, data, AI, and product teams to translate requirements into sound application architecture

• Communicate technical tradeoffs and design decisions clearly across functions

• Maintain architecture and API documentation that supports reproducibility, onboarding, and shared understanding

• Participate actively in design and code reviews, raising concerns and offering constructive feedback

Leadership & Influence

• Take ownership of system components end-to-end with growing scope of architectural responsibility

• Contribute to architectural standards and best practices that lift the quality of work across the team

• Begin mentoring more junior engineers, sharing knowledge and supporting their growth

What You’ll Bring

• 5+ years of professional software engineering experience, with hands-on experience designing cloud-native applications

• Working knowledge of a cloud platform and cloud-native application patterns, with AWS preferred

• Proficiency in at least one backend language and familiarity with another (e.g., Python, TypeScript, Java, Go)

• Experience building microservices, serverless functions, and event-driven systems

• Familiarity with containers and orchestration

• Experience designing and consuming APIs across REST, GraphQL, or gRPC and working with API gateways

• Working knowledge of infrastructure as code and CI/CD

• Familiarity with observability, scalability, and resilience practices in cloud applications

• Understanding of cloud security, identity, and access management fundamentals 

• Experience integrating AI or LLM services into applications, including RAG or inference patterns

• Demonstrable, day-to-day usage of AI-forward tools such as Claude and Cursor

• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to navigate ambiguous technical challenges with sound judgment

Helpful Extras and Unique Skills

• CMS integration specialist experienced in localized site builds and content migration, with hands-on exposure to SurfOS.

You’ll Do Well Here if You Are

• A doer. You see something broken and fix it. You'd rather move on clarity than wait for certainty.

• A fast learner who knows you don't know everything. The AI landscape changes weekly. You're senior enough to know better and curious enough to keep learning anyway.

• Direct in a way that makes the work better. You give honest feedback. You'd rather have the hard conversation than blow smoke.

• Obsessed with craft. You know genius is in the details. You ship exceptional, not perfect, and you don't put your name on work you wouldn't stand behind.

• Built for ownership. You honor commitments, admit mistakes fast, and back your teammates when a decision costs something. No handoffs, no finger-pointing.

• All in. You treat clients' businesses like your own. You take the work seriously without taking yourself seriously.

• Resourceful when the budget, timeline, or team is tight. Constraints don't slow you down. They sharpen you.

• Glad to be in the room with people who care as much as you do. Our teams average fifteen-plus years of experience. We hire people who push each other to do better work.

 
 
The below range reflects the range of possible compensation for this role at the time of this posting. We may ultimately pay more or less than the posted range. This range may be modified in the future. An employee's position within the salary range will be based on several factors including, but not limited to, relevant education, qualifications, certifications, experience, skills, seniority, geographic location, performance, shift, travel requirements, sales or revenue-based metrics, any collective bargaining agreements, and business or organizational needs. The salary range for this role based in the US is $110,000. USD - $ 151,000.USD; the salary range for this role based in Canada is: $90,000. USD - $124,000. USD. We offer a comprehensive package of benefits including paid time off, medical/dental/vision insurance and 401(k) to eligible employees. 
 
An offer of employment may be conditional upon successful completion of a background check in accordance with local legislation and our candidate privacy notice. Your current employer will not be contacted without your permission.  We are committed to ensuring equal employment opportunities for all job applicants and employees. Employment decisions are based upon job-related reasons regardless of an applicant's race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, national origin, disability, marital status, genetic information, protected veteran status, or any other status protected by law.