Infrastructure & Cloud Architect

Job Title: Infrastructure & Cloud Architect

Experience:

12+ years in IT infrastructure, including experience in infrastructure architecture, data centre transformation, hybrid cloud and automation.

Role Overview

We are seeking an Infrastructure & Cloud Architect to design, modernise and govern enterprise infrastructure across on-premises data centres and cloud environments. The candidate must have strong hands‑on expertise in VMware, Nutanix, operating systems, infrastructure automation and at least one major cloud platform.

Key Responsibilities

• Assess existing infrastructure and develop architecture blueprints, technology roadmaps and modernisation plans aligned with business requirements.
• Design highly available, scalable and secure solutions covering compute, virtualisation, storage, networking, backup and disaster recovery.
• Lead data centre consolidation, infrastructure refresh, workload migration and hybrid cloud integration initiatives.
• Architect and optimise VMware and Nutanix environments, including cluster design, capacity planning, resilience, upgrades and performance tuning.
• Design cloud infrastructure covering landing zones, connectivity, identity, security, governance, monitoring and cost optimisation.
• Define operating system standards, hardening baselines, patching strategies and lifecycle management for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows Server.
• Develop infrastructure automation using Ansible and scripting for provisioning, configuration management, patching, health checks and remediation.
• Establish backup and disaster recovery strategies with defined RPO/RTO requirements and validated recovery procedures.
• Produce high-level and low-level designs, bills of materials, implementation plans, migration approaches and operational handover documentation.
• Provide technical leadership to delivery teams and support complex incident resolution, root cause analysis and vendor coordination.

Mandatory Technical Skills

• Data centre infrastructure: Enterprise rack and blade servers, hardware sizing, high availability, capacity management and familiarity with power, cooling, rack layout and physical redundancy requirements.
• Virtualisation and HCI: Strong hands‑on experience with VMware vSphere, ESXi, vCenter and Nutanix infrastructure, including AHV and Prism.
• Operating systems: In-depth Red Hat Enterprise Linux administration and troubleshooting, including networking, storage, permissions, services, SELinux, performance and patching. Strong working knowledge of Windows Server.
• Storage: SAN, NAS, block, file and object storage; Fibre Channel, iSCSI, multipathing, replication and storage performance.
• Networking: TCP/IP, VLANs, routing, switching, DNS, DHCP, load balancing, firewalls and secure data centre‑to‑cloud connectivity.
• Cloud: Hands‑on architecture and implementation experience with at least one major cloud platform—Microsoft Azure, AWS or Google Cloud.
• Identity and security: Active Directory, role‑based access control, privileged access, certificates, encryption, vulnerability remediation and infrastructure hardening.
• Backup and recovery: Enterprise backup platforms, restore validation, ransomware recovery considerations and disaster recovery planning and testing.
• Ansible and automation: Practical experience developing playbooks, roles and inventories; managing credentials securely; and implementing controlled, repeatable automation through Ansible Automation Platform or AWX.
• Infrastructure as code and scripting: Experience with Terraform or equivalent tools, Git, and Bash, PowerShell or Python.
• Operations and monitoring: Infrastructure observability, alerting, logging, performance analysis, ITSM integration and CMDB dependencies.

Required Certifications

Red Hat certification: RHCSA or RHCE, with RHCE preferred.

At least one relevant certification in Microsoft Azure, AWS or Google Cloud, preferably aligned with cloud architecture or infrastructure administration.

Preferred Skills and Certifications

• Additional certifications in VMware, Nutanix, Ansible or Terraform.
• Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift and container infrastructure.
• Software‑defined networking, micro‑segmentation and zero‑trust architecture.
• Automated provisioning, self‑service infrastructure, event‑driven remediation and integration with ServiceNow or other ITSM platforms.
• Cloud cost management, licensing optimisation and infrastructure total cost of ownership analysis.
• Experience supporting regulated environments and implementing audit and compliance requirements.

Education and Professi