Hybrid Cloud Architect

About Charles River Associates

For over 50 years, Charles River Associates has been a premier consulting firm that offers employees a place to learn from a diverse group of consultants, industry experts, and academics. At CRA you will be exposed to leading minds who use economic, financial, and business analysis to solve complex world problems for an impressive roster of clients, including major law firms, Fortune 100 companies, and government agencies. Through a collegial environment, formal and informal training opportunities, and a broad array of professional development resources, your experience at CRA will open doors for you throughout your career.

The Information Technology (ITS) department at Charles River Associates is currently a team of more than 40 professionals dedicated to enhancing, maintaining, and developing the firm's technology infrastructure and security. The team is comprised of four functions:

• Service Delivery & Telecom
• Enterprise Application Solutions
• Infrastructure, Networking and Cloud Solutions
• Information Security

Information Technology staff are based in the Boston, Chicago, London, Munich, New York, Oakland, San Francisco, College Station and Washington, DC offices.

Mainly a Microsoft house, CRA is looking to maximize the performance of our on-premise systems and hybrid infrastructure, meaning experience with cloud technologies is essential for this role. 

Position Overview

The Hybrid Cloud Architect will enable CRA’s transition to a hybrid cloud environment by assessing workload migration readiness, running proof-of-concept projects, and building frameworks for cloud governance and automation. This role is central to preparing on-premises infrastructure for cloud integration and supporting the organization’s modernization goals.

Key Responsibilities

• Cloud Migration Assessment: Evaluate existing workloads and infrastructure for cloud migration readiness. Identify opportunities and challenges for moving workloads to AWS, Azure, or GCP.
• On-Premises Infrastructure Optimization: Assess and improve on-premises compute, storage, and virtualization platforms (VMware vSphere), including capacity planning, performance tuning, and lifecycle/patch management for VMware and supporting Everpure infrastructure to enable reliable hybrid integration. 
• Identity, DNS/DHCP & Core Services: Partner with domain/identity owners to ensure Active Directory/Azure AD integration, group policy strategy, DNS/DHCP health, certificate services, and time synchronization are configured for secure, resilient hybrid operations. 
• Hybrid Connectivity & Network Readiness: Validate on-prem network segmentation, routing, firewalls, and load balancing to enable secure connectivity to cloud environments (e.g., VPN/ExpressRoute/Direct Connect), including latency/bandwidth requirements for target workloads. 
• Backup, DR & Resilience: Review and enhance on-premises backup and disaster recovery practices using Rubrik (policies, retention, immutability, restore testing), and define hybrid DR patterns and recovery objectives (RPO/RTO) as workloads transition to or integrate with cloud platforms. 
• Proof-of-Concept Leadership: Lead hybrid cloud proof-of-concept initiatives (e.g., analytics sandboxes, VDI burst capacity), collaborating with infrastructure and modernization teams to validate solutions and prepare for future migrations.
• Cloud Governance & FinOps: Develop and implement cloud governance frameworks, including security, compliance, and cost management (FinOps) practices.
• Automation & Integration: Support the adoption of automation tools (e.g., Ansible, Terraform) for cloud provisioning, configuration, and management. Work with the Automation Engineer to standardize hybrid workflows.
• Collaboration: Partner with on-premises and cloud teams to share expertise, standardize practices, and support hybrid initiatives.
• Documentation & Enablement: Document cloud migration processes, governance standards, and lessons learned. Contribute to training and enablement efforts for broader team upskilling.

Relevant Skills & Experience

• Experience with cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP) and hybrid cloud architectures
• Experience with Broadcom vSphere / VCF, Dell compute, and modern backup (Rubrik preferred) 
• Strong understanding of workload migration