Infrastructure Architect / SME

INFRASTRUCTURE ARCHITECT - CONTRACT - REMOTE - 6 MONTHS + (INSIDE IR35)

The Infrastructure Architect will be accountable for ensuring the service requirements for DC Operations and Infrastructure meet the business outcomes, leverage existing services and align to both business IT Strategy and industry best practice, representing the clients interests in selecting DC Operations, Networks and Infrastructure service suppliers and supporting strategic decision making for these areas.

Principal accountabilities
• Business and project engagement

o Maintaining strong relationship with technology and services teams.
o Understanding the service Infrastructure landscape and roadmaps.
o Evaluating and assuring the Infrastructure service management requirements for incoming and existing suppliers.
o Ensuring there are coherent and aligned plans covering infrastructure as part of the overall programme of work.
o Ability to consider, portray and present technical solution options that take into consideration colleague experience and satisfaction and Corporate SLAs and OLAs.
o Gather and analyse data and information to support assessments and recommendations.
o Collaborate with other technical architects, solution architects, enterprise architects and programmes to assess the impact of changes to inflight projects and live services.

Continuously Develop
o Remain up to date with current technology in assigned domain areas through continuous training, knowledge gathering and following current market trends and research around technology, best practice and tooling.

Technical 
o Accountable for the end-to-end Infrastructure architecture definition at a conceptual and logical level, the detailed design to be provided by the supplier.
o Responsible for defining Infrastructure strategies and solutions to meet VfM, Scalability, Resilience and High Availability business requirements.
o Ensure that all architectures or architectural increments are aligned to the target architecture, standards and principles of clients IT Strategy.
o Produce and maintain Infrastructure architecture documents to support the domain.
o Ensure designs are compliant with common architecture principles, policies, standards, patterns and best practices.Any deviations must be reported and approved by the Technical Design Authority and any associated risks and technical debt identified maintained via the central risk register and technical debt register.

o Provide support for major incidents and service impacting events.

Knowledge required

• Infrastructure architecture on-premise and cloud.
• Knowledge of legacy and proprietary platforms would be helpful
• A detailed understanding of Infrastructure, Data, Integration, Security, Data centres, Cloud and Web Architectures, so that end-to-end architectures can be defined
• Ability to design solutions and drive through implementation and delivery

Experience required
• Demonstrable track record of successful delivery in architecture roles
• Experienced in clearly articulating via presentations, workshops and solution architecture documents
• Ability to communicate verbally and in writing with Senior non-technical stakeholders
• Ability to explain technical concepts in a non-technical way
• Working in a multi-vendor & multi-supplier environment
• Experience of working in ALBs or HMG Departments
• Experienced in Data Centre operations, Data Centre relocations/transformations, On-premise to cloud migrations and Infrastructure service improvement initiatives
• Production of legacy to more current target infrastructure strategies and designs
• Used to working with Consultancies and service suppliers in assuring Infrastructure requirements and operations and met through effective and compliant delivery
• Production of Infrastructure strategies and designs including iterative migration plans
• Aptitude to quickly understand and exploit new and emerging Infrastructure technologies
• Experience working in a geographically dispersed team-oriented, collaborative environment