About the Role
The Infrastructure Architect is responsible for designing, building, and maintaining the organization’s core IT infrastructure, including on-premises, cloud, hybrid, and edge environments. This role defines the architectural vision, standards, and roadmaps that ensure scalability, reliability, security, and cost efficiency across compute, storage, networking, and virtualization platforms. The ideal candidate combines deep technical expertise with strategic thinking, acting as a technical lead who bridges business requirements and infrastructure solutions while mentoring engineering teams and driving modernization initiatives.
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Qualifications
- Bachelor’s degree in computer science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field (master’s preferred).
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, or Google Professional Cloud Architect.
- VMware VCDX/VCAP, Cisco CCIE/CCNP, or equivalent networking certifications.
- TOGAF, Kubernetes (CKA/CKAD), or Hashi Corp Terraform certifications are a plus.
Experience
- 8–12+ years of experience in IT infrastructure, systems engineering, or cloud architecture, with at least 3–5 years in an architect role.
- Proven experience designing large-scale, mission-critical infrastructure in hybrid or multi-cloud environments.
- Hands-on background in systems administration, networking, or virtualization prior to architecture roles.
Skills
- Excellent analytical, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
Technical Competencies
- Deep expertise in cloud platforms (AWS, Azure, G42), virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V, KVM), and containers (Docker, Kubernetes).
- Strong knowledge of networking (SDN, VPC, load balancing, DNS, firewalls, VPN, BGP) and storage (SAN, NAS, object storage).
- Proficiency with IaC and automation tools (Terraform, Ansible, Puppet, Chef).
- Solid understanding of security architecture, identity management (IAM, AD, SSO), and zero-trust principles.
- Experience with cost modeling, capacity planning, and vendor management.
Key Accountabilities
1. Infrastructure Architecture & Design
- Design end-to-end infrastructure solutions across on-premises, cloud (AWS, Azure, G42), and hybrid environments.
- Develop reference architectures, standards, and blueprints for compute, storage, networking, virtualization, and containerization.
- Define and maintain the infrastructure roadmap aligned with business strategy, growth projections, and technology trends.
- Evaluate emerging technologies (e.g., IaC, Kubernetes, serverless, edge computing) and recommend adoption where appropriate.
2. Cloud & Platform Strategy
- Lead cloud migration, multi-cloud, and hybrid cloud architecture initiatives.
- Design scalable, highly available, and disaster-resilient platforms (IaaS, PaaS, container platforms).
- Optimize cloud spend through right-sizing, reserved capacity, and architectural efficiency.
- Establish landing zones, network topologies, identity integration, and governance guardrails.
3. Performance, Availability & Resilience
- Define and enforce SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs for critical infrastructure services.
- Architect high-availability (HA) and disaster recovery (DR) solutions, including RTO/RPO targets and regular testing.
- Conduct capacity planning and performance tuning to support current and future demand.
- Lead root cause analysis (RCA) for major infrastructure incidents and drive architectural improvements.
4. Security & Compliance Integration
- Embed security-by-design principles into all infrastructure architectures (zero trust, least privilege, segmentation).
- Ensure infrastructure meets regulatory and compliance requirements (e.g., ISO 27001, SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA, PCI-DSS).
- Collaborate with Security & Compliance teams on vulnerability management, patching strategy, and audit readiness.
5. Automation & Operational Excellence
- Champion Infrastructure as Code (IaC) using tools such as Terraform, Ansible, CloudFormation, or Bicep.
- Define monitoring, observability, and logging standards (e.g., Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, ELK).
- Reduce operational toil through automation and self-service platforms.
6. Technical Leadership & Collaboration
- Act as a subject matter expert and escalation point for infrastructure engineering teams.
- Mentor engineers and promote best practices in architecture, documentation, and design reviews.
- Partner with application, data, security, and network teams to ensure end-to-end solution coherence.
- Present architectural proposals and trade-off analyses to technical and executive stakeholders.
7. Vendor & Cost Management
- Evaluate and select infrastructure vendors, platforms, and managed services.
- Negotiate technical requirements and support licensing/hardware procurement decisions.
- Manage infrastructure TCO and identify cost optimization opportunities.
