Lead Cloud Architect

Cooley is seeking a Lead Cloud Architect to join the Innovation team.

About Cooley: Cooley is a global law firm with an expansive practice and more than 3,000 employees and partners worldwide. We value and celebrate diverse perspectives and strive to create a workplace where every individual can thrive. At the core of Cooley’s success is the exceptional talent and unwavering spirit of our people. We embrace individuality while fostering a ‘one-firm’ culture where collaboration and creativity thrive. Our people are the foundation of our success and the driving force behind everything we do.

About Cooley AI: Cooley AI is the wholly-owned subsidiary of Cooley LLP. The frontier development arm of the leading technology law firm in the world. Our mission is to bring the best-in-class practices from the technology field into the legal domain to help lead our firm and the legal industry into the AI era. All employees of Cooley AI are employees of Cooley and are seconded to Cooley AI.

Hybrid Schedule Philosophy: As part of the Cooley culture, we recognize and appreciate the value of being together, in person, to build comradery with others in the office and to be a contributing member of the Cooley office. However, we also appreciate the benefits and flexibility that come from remote working. As such, the default assumption for employees and partners is a hybrid schedule: some in-office presence and some work from home days absent certain essential in-office roles (i.e., facilities, local office technology, etc.) that require five (5) days/week in-office.

Position Summary: As a leading technology law firm, Cooley is determined to become a leader in the digital practice of law. The Lead Cloud Architect is responsible for owning the technical architecture and engineering standards for a greenfield SOC2-compliant SaaS platform built on AWS with hybrid connectivity to Azure and Databricks. This is a foundational leadership position that will have input into every infrastructure, security, and delivery decision. Specific duties and responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following:

Position Responsibilities:

• Responsible for designing and maintaining Terraform modules, CI/CD golden path templates, and cloud infrastructure that enforce SOC 2-compliant patterns by default
• Owns the "paved road" used by product engineers for deployment
• Partners with the DevSecOps Engineer to validate security requirements in every template
• Maintains dotted-line governance reporting to Head of Information Security and compliance matters
• Serve as direct supervisor and mentor to direct reports
• Provides day-to-day supervision of direct reports, ensure compliance with assigned work hours and monitor for compliance with all firm and department policies. Manage staffing coverage, review and process time logs/time off requests
• Support business professional development and continued educational opportunities
• In collaboration with immediate supervisor and central HR, participate in hiring, performance appraisals, counseling, termination and other employee lifecycle events
• All other duties as assigned or required

Skills & Responsibilities

Required:

• After orientation at Cooley LLP, exhibit proficiency in the Microsoft Office suite, iManage and other firm applications; demonstrated ability to learn and adopt new systems quickly
• Ability to work extended and/or weekend hours, as required
• Ability to travel, as required
• 7+ years direct applicable experience (e.g., cloud infrastructure or architecture roles)
• Extensive hands-on background with AWS (IAM, networking, Organizations) and Terraform at scale
• Experience with multi-cloud or hybrid architectures involving Azure connectivity
• Ability to set technical direction while remaining hands-on during the buildout phase
• Strong knowledge of infrastructure-as-code, zero-trust networking, and least-privilege access models

Preferred:

• Bachelor’s degree

Competencies:

• Excellent analytical, problem-solving and project management skills
• Ability to balance best practices with business objectives
• Entrepreneurial by nature
• Excellent attention to detail
• Exceptional interpersonal and communication skills with ability to facilitate and solve problems
• Ability to organize, prioritize and coordinate multiple activities often under tight timelines
• Ability to drive projects to completion and achieve goals
• Strong judgment
• Team-player with collaborative spirit
• Unwavering ability to handle and maintain confidentiality regarding firm information, projects, client data
• High level of professionalism at all times
• Demonstrated ability to lead through influence and develop talent
• Proactive, analytical mindset

Cooley offers a competitive compensation and excellent benefits package and is committed to fair and equitable employment practices.

EOE.