GCP Architect for New York based Companies Scaling to Production
I’m Amit Malhotra, a Principal GCP Architect and founder of Buoyant Cloud. I work as a fractional cloud architect embedded directly in your engineering team — designing, building, and hardening your Google Cloud Platform environment with the same rigor I bring to engagements with global automotive manufacturers, large Canadian healthcare platforms, and fast-scaling SaaS startups. No sales layer. No juniors. No hand-offs. When you engage Buoyant Cloud, you get me.
You’re Here If…
- The GCP environment your team set up is now your biggest liability — overly permissive IAM, no landing zone, networking that was “good enough” early on but crumbles under real traffic or compliance scrutiny.
- Your enterprise prospect sent a security questionnaire and your team doesn’t have clean answers — no VPC Service Controls, no documented access model, no audit trail that satisfies SOC 2.
- GKE clusters are running but nobody fully understands them — the engineer who set them up left, there’s no namespace isolation, RBAC is wide open, and every scaling event is a firefight.
- Terraform exists but nobody trusts it — modules are copy-pasted, dev and prod have drifted, and applying changes feels like rolling the dice.
- DevOps is slowing releases, not accelerating them — no security gates, no image scanning, and your team spends more time firefighting infrastructure than shipping features.
- You want to build with Google ADK, Vertex AI, or MCP servers but your team has product expertise, not GCP platform expertise — and you need someone who can architect the AI infrastructure, not just the model.
What I Do as a GCP Architect
Most GCP environments I review weren’t designed — they were assembled fast and never revisited. Someone spun up a project, created service accounts with Owner role, deployed to GKE from a laptop, and called it infrastructure. It worked at low traffic. Then the company grew, the enterprise deals started, and the security reviews exposed everything.
I work with New York engineering teams on:
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What I Do for New York Engineering Teams
New York’s regulatory density creates GCP architecture requirements you won’t find in other markets. NYDFS cybersecurity regulations, SOC 2 Type II for every enterprise SaaS deal, HIPAA for healthtech, and Fortune 500 security questionnaires that go 200 questions deep. I architect for that reality.
Cloud architecture and landing zone design. I build GCP foundations for companies where compliance isn’t optional — org hierarchy with environment-level isolation, Terraform-managed IAM with custom roles scoped to job function, VPC design with private connectivity and network segmentation between regulated and non-regulated workloads. Every foundation follows the SCALE Framework — but the implementation is shaped by your specific compliance regime.
GKE for regulated production workloads. New York fintech and healthtech companies can’t treat GKE as a dev tool. I architect clusters for audit-ready production: private clusters with authorized networks, Workload Identity Federation (no service account keys), Binary Authorization enforcing signed-image-only deployments, namespace-level RBAC tied to your identity provider, and network policies that enforce zero-trust east-west traffic. The platform your SOC 2 auditor can actually verify.
DevSecOps that passes enterprise security reviews. I implement my 6-Layer Security Model with the specific controls New York enterprise buyers ask about: VPC Service Controls perimeters around sensitive APIs, secrets management via Secret Manager with CSI injection (no secrets in environment variables), Cloud Audit Logs with tamper-proof export to a locked-down project, and Security Command Center findings mapped to your compliance framework. I’ve taken GCP environments from zero posture to SOC 2 audit-ready in 60–90 days.
Cloud migration for enterprises leaving on-prem. New York has a concentration of financial services and insurance companies still running critical systems on-prem or in legacy hosting. I lead end-to-end GCP migration and modernization — hybrid architecture design, database migration to Cloud SQL or AlloyDB, and application modernization from VMs to containers or Cloud Run. The migration plan accounts for your compliance requirements, not just your workload requirements.
Agentic AI and Google ADK for enterprise automation. New York enterprises are moving past chatbot experiments into production AI agents that execute real business workflows — processing compliance documents, orchestrating approval chains, querying internal systems. I build these using Google’s Agent Development Kit with custom MCP servers that connect to your databases, APIs, and internal tools. Deployed on Vertex AI Agent Engine with the authentication, authorization, audit logging, and cost controls that regulated environments require.
Fractional or Full Engagement — Your Choice
New York companies hire full-time principal cloud architects at $250K–$350K total comp — then wait 3–6 months for them to ramp up on your environment, your compliance requirements, and your team’s workflow. I plug in as your fractional architect with zero ramp-up on GCP. I own the platform roadmap, make the architecture calls, review every infrastructure PR, and unblock your engineers — at a fraction of the full-time cost, with none of the hiring risk.
Project engagement. A defined problem with a defined outcome — your landing zone needs to be built before your SOC 2 audit in 90 days. Your GKE clusters need hardening before your enterprise prospect completes their security review. Your DevSecOps pipeline needs security gates before your next deployment. I scope it, build it, document it, and hand it off. Your team runs it from there.
I don’t sell retainers. I don’t pad engagements. Every hour is architecture, implementation, or knowledge transfer — nothing else.
Why New York Teams Work With Me
New York doesn’t have a shortage of cloud consultancies. It has a shortage of GCP architects who do the work themselves. The Big Four will send you a team of five where the senior person disappears after the kickoff. The offshore firms will give you a Terraform module library that nobody on your team understands. The freelancers will configure your GKE cluster but can’t answer your SOC 2 auditor’s questions about IAM inheritance.
I’ve delivered production-grade GCP platforms for Tangerine Bank, Telus Health, Loblaws, RBC, and Ford — as well as high-growth SaaS startups where I was the entire cloud architecture function. I understand what it takes to pass a Fortune 500 security review, satisfy a SOC 2 auditor, and keep a regulated platform operational under real production load. That’s the experience behind every architecture decision I make for New York clients.
I work with engineering teams in New York and across North America — fintech, healthtech, insurance technology, enterprise SaaS, and regulated workloads.
Book Your Architecture Review
If you’re a New York CTO or engineering leader looking for a GCP architect who actually does the work—not one who sends juniors—let’s talk. Book a 30-minute architecture review and I’ll give you an honest assessment of where your GCP environment stands and what it needs.
Ready to Build a Platform That Scales Without the Tech Debt?
