Cloud Architect
Cloud architects design scalable, resilient, cost-effective cloud systems. This path covers the specialised English for cloud design reviews, writing architecture decision records, presenting FinOps plans, and communicating infrastructure trade-offs to developers, finance, and executives.
Topics covered
- Cloud design patterns
- Infrastructure as Code
- Cost optimisation & FinOps
- Security & compliance
- Multi-cloud & hybrid
- Well-Architected frameworks
Vocabulary spotlight
4 terms every Cloud Architect should know in English:
Data transferred out of a cloud provider's network, typically billed separately
"Egress costs were 40% of our cloud bill — we moved the analytics job to the same region as the data."
A pre-configured, secure cloud environment that serves as the baseline for new workloads
"Every new team deploys into our AWS Landing Zone which enforces security guardrails automatically."
The maximum scope of impact if a system, service, or account fails
"Using separate AWS accounts per environment limits the blast radius of a misconfiguration."
The practice of managing cloud spending with financial accountability across engineering and finance
"Our FinOps practice reduced monthly cloud spend by $120k through reserved instance planning."
📚 Vocabulary Reference
Key terms organised by category for Cloud Architects:
Core Cloud Concepts
Design Patterns
Infrastructure as Code
FinOps & Cost
Recommended exercises
Real-world scenarios you'll practise
- Presenting a cloud migration architecture to a board of directors
- Writing an ADR to justify choosing multi-region active-active over active-passive
- Explaining a $200k cloud cost overrun and your remediation plan to the CFO
- Designing a shared landing zone that satisfies both security and developer experience requirements
🎯 Interview questions specific to this role
Practise answering these questions out loud — or in writing. Each question targets a real interviewer concern for Cloud Architects.
- Walk me through how you would design a cloud architecture for a globally distributed SaaS application.
- How do you approach cost optimisation without sacrificing reliability?
- What is the difference between a multi-cloud and a hybrid cloud strategy?
- How do you handle security and compliance in a cloud environment?
- What is a Landing Zone and why is it important for enterprise cloud adoption?