Cloud Architecture Advisory for GCP

I work with founders, engineering leaders, and platform teams as a senior GCP architecture advisor — helping them make the right technical decisions at the platform level before those decisions become expensive to reverse. This is not implementation work. It’s the strategic, experienced judgment that shapes what gets built, how it gets built, and whether the architecture will hold up as the organisation grows. I’m Amit Malhotra, a Principal GCP Architect based in Toronto with 20+ years in IT and 6+ years hands-on with Google Cloud, Terraform, GKE, and DevSecOps — working across regulated enterprises including RBC, Tangerine Bank, and Telus Health, and with SaaS and digital product teams across Canada and the USA.

The most expensive architectural mistakes aren’t the ones you make during implementation — they’re the ones you make during design, when the decisions feel low-stakes because nothing is built yet. A wrong call on multi-tenancy, data residency, security model, or GCP project structure can take months and significant engineering cost to undo. Advisory work is about getting those decisions right when it’s still cheap to change them.

Every advisory engagement I run draws on the SCALE Framework — my structured GCP architecture methodology — as a lens for evaluating platform decisions across Security, Cloud-Native design, Automation, Lifecycle Operations, and Elastic Scalability.

What I Typically Do

The Advisory Work I Do With Engineering Leaders

As a GCP architecture advisor I help with the decisions that shape platforms — not the day-to-day implementation. The work typically looks like one of these:

Architecture Reviews and Audits: I review your existing GCP architecture end-to-end — the project structure, IAM model, network design, Terraform patterns, GKE configuration, and CI/CD pipelines — and give you an honest, detailed assessment of what’s working, what’s creating risk, and what needs to change. Not a checkbox exercise. A real architectural opinion.
Future-State Platform Architecture Design: For teams planning a significant platform investment — a migration, a modernisation, or a new platform build — I help design the target architecture before implementation begins. The right GCP project structure, the right compute strategy, the right security model, the right Terraform approach. Decisions made correctly at this stage prevent months of remediation later.
Technology Selection and Trade-Off Analysis: GKE vs Cloud Run vs App Engine. Terraform vs Pulumi. GitHub Actions vs Cloud Build. AlloyDB vs Cloud Spanner vs CloudSQL. These decisions have long tails and the wrong choice is rarely obvious. I bring hands-on experience with these tools in production to help you make the right call for your specific context — not the call that’s fashionable.
Security and Identity Strategy: I help engineering leaders design the GCP security model — IAM hierarchy, Workload Identity Federation, network segmentation, Secret Manager strategy, and compliance architecture — before it’s built into the platform and becomes expensive to change. Particularly valuable for regulated industries or teams preparing for SOC 2 or enterprise customer security reviews.
Cloud Governance and Standards: For growing engineering organisations, I help define the GCP governance model — project naming conventions, resource tagging strategy, IAM standards, Terraform module patterns, cost allocation approach, and the platform standards that prevent the environment from fragmenting as more teams are onboarded.
Migration and Modernisation Strategy: For organisations planning a migration from on-premises or legacy cloud environments to GCP, I help define the migration strategy — what moves first, what gets re-architected rather than lifted, what the target landing zone looks like, and how to sequence the migration to avoid disrupting production.
Risk and Complexity Assessment: Sometimes a team is mid-way through an architectural decision or implementation and needs an independent view on whether they’re heading in the right direction. I provide honest, experienced second opinions on architectural choices — without any stake in the outcome.

Typical Advisory Engagements

What Advisory Engagements Look Like in Practice

Advisory engagements are flexible by design — structured around what you actually need rather than a fixed deliverable. Common formats include:

Architecture Reviews and Audits: A structured review of your current GCP environment — typically 2 to 5 days of analysis followed by a written findings report and a working session to walk through recommendations. The output is a clear picture of your current architecture’s strengths, risks, and the prioritised changes that will have the most impact.
Design Sessions and Whiteboarding: Working sessions — remote or in-person — to design or redesign specific parts of your architecture. Useful when a team is making a significant platform decision and wants an experienced architect in the room to pressure-test the design before it’s committed to.
Platform Strategy Workshops: A focused session with your engineering leadership team to define the platform strategy — what you’re building toward, what the key architectural principles are, how the platform will evolve, and what the team needs to invest in to get there.
CTO-Level Technical Discussions: For founders and engineering directors who need a senior technical peer to think through platform decisions with — not a consultant delivering a report, but an experienced architect who can engage with the real complexity and trade-offs at the leadership level.
Cloud Roadmap Definition: Working with your engineering leadership to define a GCP roadmap — what gets built in what order, what the key milestones are, how to sequence investments to maximise platform value while managing risk and engineering capacity.

Ongoing Fractional Architect Support: For teams that need senior GCP architectural judgment on a recurring basis without a full-time hire — I work as a fractional Principal Architect, available for architecture decisions, design reviews, and technical leadership on a regular cadence. Particularly useful for startups that have strong engineering talent but need a more senior architectural perspective.

How I Work as an Advisor

What Advisory Engagements Look Like in Practice

Advisory engagements are flexible by design — structured around what you actually need rather than a fixed deliverable. Common formats include:

Architecture Reviews and Audits: A structured review of your current GCP environment — typically 2 to 5 days of analysis followed by a written findings report and a working session to walk through recommendations. The output is a clear picture of your current architecture’s strengths, risks, and the prioritised changes that will have the most impact.
Design Sessions and Whiteboarding: Working sessions — remote or in-person — to design or redesign specific parts of your architecture. Useful when a team is making a significant platform decision and wants an experienced architect in the room to pressure-test the design before it’s committed to.
Platform Strategy Workshops: A focused session with your engineering leadership team to define the platform strategy — what you’re building toward, what the key architectural principles are, how the platform will evolve, and what the team needs to invest in to get there.
CTO-Level Technical Discussions: For founders and engineering directors who need a senior technical peer to think through platform decisions with — not a consultant delivering a report, but an experienced architect who can engage with the real complexity and trade-offs at the leadership level.
Cloud Roadmap Definition: Working with your engineering leadership to define a GCP roadmap — what gets built in what order, what the key milestones are, how to sequence investments to maximise platform value while managing risk and engineering capacity.

Who This Is For

Is Architecture Advisory the Right Engagement for You?

Architecture advisory delivers the most value when you have real architectural decisions to make and need senior, independent GCP expertise to make them well. This is typically a good fit for:

Founders and CTOs building technical products on GCP — who need a Principal Architect’s perspective on platform decisions without the cost or commitment of a full-time senior hire. See the Digital Products & High-Growth Startups page for more context.
Engineering directors and VPs who need an independent second opinion on a significant architectural decision — a migration strategy, a platform redesign, a technology selection — before committing the engineering team’s time and budget
Startups approaching a scale inflection point — where the architecture that worked at launch needs to be assessed and evolved before it becomes a constraint. The SaaS & Technology Platforms page covers this in more detail.
Companies redesigning core GCP platforms — particularly those in regulated industries where architectural decisions have compliance implications. See the FinTech & Regulated Systems
Teams needing senior technical leadership on a fractional basis — where the organisation has strong engineering talent but lacks the principal-level GCP architecture experience needed to make the right platform decisions

This is not the right fit if you need basic implementation work, managed services, ticket-based support, or staff augmentation. If you need hands-on GCP platform implementation rather than advisory, the

GCP Architecture & Modernization service or Platform Engineering service is the right starting point.

Let’s Talk

Speak Directly With Amit Malhotra

Email

amit@buoyantcloudtech.com

Operating From

Based in Toronto (EST), working with engineering teams across Canada & USA

Ready to Architect Your Future on Google Cloud?

Speak directly with me — a Principal Cloud Architect — about your GCP architecture, security, platform engineering, or MLOps goals. I typically respond within one business day.

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Trusted Technical Advisor

Amit works as a true architecture partner, not just a consultant. He focuses on making the right decisions early and designing systems that remain maintainable as they scale. His guidance helped us avoid costly redesigns and establish a solid cloud foundation from the start.

Architecture leadership

Amit helped us redesign our Google Cloud architecture to support rapid growth without increasing operational complexity. His ability to simplify difficult architectural decisions and design scalable platform foundations had an immediate impact on our engineering velocity and system reliability.

Platform engineering & DevSecOps

We engaged Amit to build a secure and scalable platform on Google Cloud with Terraform, Cloud Run, Kong API gateway and automated CI/CD. He brought deep hands-on expertise and designed everything with long-term operability in mind. Our deployment process is now significantly more reliable and secure.