Application Migration & Modernisation Specialist - AWS

Key Responsibilities - Application Assessment & Migration

• Assess legacy, on-premises and existing cloud applications for AWS migration readiness.

• Conduct application discovery, dependency mapping, technical assessment and migration complexity analysis.

• Define migration strategies using the 7Rs: Retain, Retire, Rehost, Relocate, Repurchase, Replatform and Refactor.

• Develop migration waves, sequencing, implementation plans, cutover plans, rollback procedures and migration runbooks.

• Identify technical risks, application dependencies, downtime requirements and remediation actions.

• Execute and support end-to-end production application migrations to AWS, including post-migration validation, optimisation and stabilisation.

Application Modernisation

• Modernise monolithic and legacy applications into modular, microservices or cloud-native architectures.

• Refactor and re-platform applications for AWS; modernise runtimes, frameworks, middleware and integration patterns.

• Design containerised solutions using Docker, Amazon ECS and Amazon EKS.

• Implement serverless patterns using AWS Lambda where technically appropriate.

• Modernise integrations using REST APIs, API Gateway, messaging and event-driven architectures.

• Improve scalability, resilience, maintainability, security, observability and application performance.

AWS Architecture & Engineering

• Design secure, highly available, resilient and scalable AWS application architectures.

• Hands-on experience with Amazon EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda, RDS/Aurora, S3, VPC, Elastic Load Balancing, CloudFront, Route 53 and CloudWatch.

• Strong working knowledge of AWS IAM, Secrets Manager, Systems Manager, Migration Hub and AWS Application Migration Service.

• Design backup, disaster recovery and business continuity solutions on AWS.

• Apply AWS Well-Architected Framework principles across security, reliability, performance, operational excellence and cost optimisation.

Database & Data Migration

• Assess application database dependencies and define database migration approaches.

• Support migrations involving Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL, DB2 and other enterprise database platforms.

• Modernise workloads toward Amazon RDS, Amazon Aurora and other appropriate AWS managed database services.

• Use AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) and related migration tooling where applicable.

• Perform migration validation, reconciliation, performance testing and production readiness checks.

DevOps, Automation & Security

• Implement or enhance CI/CD pipelines for migrated and modernised applications.

• Use Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, AWS CloudFormation and/or AWS CDK.

• Automate infrastructure provisioning, application deployment and configuration management.

• Embed security controls into the software delivery lifecycle and apply DevSecOps practices.

• Implement logging, monitoring, alerting and observability using AWS CloudWatch and relevant enterprise tooling.

Mandatory Requirements

• 7-12+ years of overall IT/application engineering experience.

• Minimum 3-5 years of hands-on AWS experience is mandatory.

• Proven experience delivering enterprise application migration and modernisation projects on AWS is mandatory.

• Hands-on production migration experience from on-premises environments to AWS.

• Strong understanding of legacy, three-tier, web, API, microservices and cloud-native application architectures.

• Strong knowledge of AWS compute, networking, storage, databases, security and migration services.

• Experience with application rehosting, re-platforming, refactoring and cloud-native modernisation.

• Hands-on experience with Docker, Kubernetes/EKS, CI/CD, Git and Infrastructure as Code.

• Strong understanding of Linux and/or Windows application environments, IAM, encryption, networking and cloud governance.

• Ability to troubleshoot complex application, infrastructure, database and migration issues.

Preferred Technical Experience

• Application stacks: Java, .NET/.NET Core, Python, Node.js and Spring Boot.

• Databases: Oracle, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, MySQL and DB2.

• DevOps: Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions and AWS CodePipeline.

• Integration: REST APIs, API Gateway, Kafka, Amazon MSK, SQS, SNS and EventBridge.

• Observability: CloudWatch, OpenTelemetry, ELK and Grafana.

AWS Certifications - Preferred

• AWS Certified Solutions Architect - Associate or Professional.

• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer - Professional.

• AWS Certified Developer - Associate.

• Candidates without certification must demonstrate substantial hands-on AWS migration and modernisation delivery experience.

Key Deliverables

• Application discovery and dependency assessment; migration readiness assessment; 7R classification and migration strategy.

• AWS target architecture and migration wave plan; technical design and remediation plan.

• Migration runbook; cutover and rollback plan; database migration and infrastructure automation.

• Performance, security and production readiness validation; hypercare and stabilisation.

• Architecture, deployment, operational and knowledge-transfer documentation.

KRA / KPI

• Migration Delivery: Applications migrated within approved scope, schedule and quality targets.

• Migration Success: Target of ≥98% successful production migrations without critical rollback.

• Availability: Meet agreed SLA and resilience targets during and after migration.

• Security: Zero unresolved critical security findings at production go-live.

• Automation: Infrastructure and deployments automated wherever technically feasible.

• Quality: Minimal production incidents, unplanned downtime and migration-related defects.

• Documentation: Complete technical, architecture, migration, operational and handover documentation.