Job Title: Infrastructure Architect
Location: Sheffield (Hybrid Working)
Contract Type: Day Rate Contract (via Umbrella Company)
Industry: Financial Services

Job Description

We are seeking a highly skilled Infrastructure Architect to join a prestigious financial services client based in Sheffield. The role involves driving the design and implementation of end-to-end infrastructure solutions while ensuring alignment with the organization's technology strategy, governance, and compliance standards.

As part of this critical function, you will collaborate with cross-functional teams, including Enterprise and Platform Architects, to deliver secure, scalable, and resilient solutions that address both current and future business needs.

Key Responsibilities

End-to-End Solution Design

* Define and oversee detailed end-to-end solution designs for infrastructure products and features in alignment with the organization's technology strategy and roadmap.

* Translate business requirements into technical architectures, addressing architectural risks, issues, and technical debt.

* Ensure infrastructure solutions are cost-effective, scalable, and adaptable to meet business outcomes.

* Embed Non-Functional Requirements (NFRs) into all solution designs.

Risk and Dependency Management

* Collaborate with Platform Architects to manage and escalate risks/issues and mitigate dependencies across multiple platforms and value streams.

* Proactively identify cross-platform dependencies and work towards seamless integration.

Governance and Architecture

* Collaborate with Platform Architects to ensure all designs comply with governance processes, including Decision-Driven Design and Solution Architecture Frameworks.

* Ensure risk-based architecture deliverables meet governance quality standards and address exceptions to reference architectures, strategies, and policies.

* Facilitate peer review processes and ensure traceability in design decision-making.

Leadership and Collaboration

* Work with engineering teams, business analysts, and architects to fulfill architectural deliverables.

* Partner with Enterprise and Platform Architects to continuously evolve the architectural strategy and identify opportunities for landscape improvement.

* Provide technical leadership and evaluate new technologies to meet emerging business requirements.

Skills and Experience Required

* Proven experience as an Infrastructure Architect in complex, enterprise-scale environments.

* Strong ability to compare and recommend technical solutions based on business requirements.

* Expertise in at least some of the following areas:

* Data Centre Infrastructure: Servers, networking, storage solutions.

* Networking: Cisco/F5 devices, VPN, LAN/WAN, SDN, TCP/UDP protocols.

* Security: Firewalls, proxies, IDS/IPS, network segmentation, WAFs.

* Cloud Technologies: AWS, Azure, GCP, Kubernetes, APIs, hybrid cloud integration.

* Automation: Ansible, Puppet, Terraform.

* Middleware: WebSphere, Tomcat, Java, messaging services.

* Operating Systems: Linux, Windows, Solaris.

* Virtualization: VMware, Hyper-V, KVM.

* Databases: Oracle, SQL Server, NoSQL databases.

* Storage: EMC SAN, NetApp NAS, object storage, backup/recovery solutions