General Function
The Senior Datacenter, Cloud & Network Solution Architect is a client-facing technical leader responsible for designing secure, resilient, scalable, and financially viable infrastructure solutions. The role emphasizes enterprise datacenter architecture, hybrid and public cloud platforms, and Cisco-based network architecture rather than ongoing managed service operations.
Reporting directly to the Vice President of Solutions, this architect leads discovery, creates end-to-end target architectures, develops technical and commercial solution components, and communicates recommendations to executive and engineering audiences. The role partners with Sales, Engineering, Delivery, Security, Finance, Portfolio, OEMs, carriers, and strategic technology partners to shape complex infrastructure modernization, migration, and transformation opportunities.
Essential Duties & Responsibilities
Architecture and Technical Leadership
- Lead client discovery workshops to document business objectives, application and workload requirements, current-state constraints, security requirements, availability targets, recovery objectives, capacity needs, and growth assumptions.
- Develop current-state, transition-state, and target-state architectures for enterprise datacenters, colocation environments, edge locations, and hybrid or multi-cloud platforms.
- Design integrated solutions across compute, virtualization, containers, storage, backup and recovery, cloud services, network, load balancing, security, observability, automation, and disaster recovery.
- Produce high-level and low-level designs, logical and physical diagrams, traffic flows, IP and segmentation strategies, bills of material, migration roadmaps, implementation assumptions, and architecture decision records.
- Evaluate architecture alternatives and document technical tradeoffs related to resilience, performance, scalability, security, interoperability, lifecycle, operational supportability, cost, and risk.
- Provide technical governance through design reviews, standards alignment, exception management, solution validation, and architecture approval checkpoints.
Datacenter and Cloud Architecture
- Architect modern datacenter platforms using technologies such as Cisco UCS, hyperconverged infrastructure, enterprise storage, VMware or comparable virtualization platforms, Kubernetes, backup, replication, and disaster-recovery solutions.
- Design Azure, AWS, and hybrid-cloud architectures, including landing zones, identity integration, connectivity, segmentation, workload placement, resiliency, data protection, governance, observability, and cost optimization.
- Lead datacenter consolidation, relocation, refresh, cloud migration, cloud repatriation, and application modernization planning, including dependency mapping and phased migration strategies.
- Define infrastructure patterns for high availability, fault isolation, geographic redundancy, recovery time objectives, recovery point objectives, capacity expansion, and business continuity.
- Create interoperable architecture patterns that integrate on-premises, colocation, edge, SaaS, and public cloud environments.
Network Architecture and Cisco Technical Leadership
- Own network architecture for datacenter, campus, branch, WAN, internet edge, cloud connectivity, and hybrid-cloud environments.
- Design Cisco-based architectures using relevant platforms such as Nexus, ACI, Catalyst, UCS, SD-WAN, Meraki, Identity Services Engine, and enterprise routing and switching technologies.
- Demonstrate expert-level command of BGP, OSPF, route redistribution, multicast, QoS, MPLS, EVPN/VXLAN, IPv4/IPv6, high-availability protocols, network segmentation, and resilient connectivity patterns.
- Design secure connectivity to Azure and AWS using private circuits, VPN, transit architectures, cloud-native routing, firewalls, load balancers, DNS, IP address management, and network security controls.
- Define network standards, reference architectures, address plans, routing policies, segmentation models, firewall dependencies, wireless and WAN patterns, and performance or availability requirements.
- Lead complex technical troubleshooting and risk analysis during architecture validation, proof-of-concept activity, migration planning, and critical design reviews.
Solution Development and Client Engagement
- Translate technical requirements into differentiated solution narratives, diagrams, proposals, executive presentations, technical responses, and statements of work.
- Lead whiteboarding sessions and present architecture recommendations to client executives, enterprise architects, engineering teams, security leaders, and operations stakeholders.
- Develop scope boundaries, assumptions, dependencies, exclusions, acceptance criteria, implementation phases, resource requirements, and transition plans.
- Create and validate capital and operating cost inputs, hardware and software bills of material, licensing assumptions, cloud-consumption estimates, professional-services effort, and partner quotes.
- Partner with OEMs, cloud providers, carriers, colocation providers, and subcontractors to validate solution feasibility, pricing, product lifecycle, lead times, and technical responsibilities.
- Support RFP and RFI responses and negotiate technically accurate statements of work while protecting solution integrity and delivery feasibility.
- Maintain awareness of emerging datacenter, networking, cloud, automation, AI infrastructure, and security technologies and convert relevant developments into repeatable architecture patterns.
Required Qualifications
- Active Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert Enterprise Infrastructure (CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure) certification is required. Candidates must hold an active CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure certification; other CCIE tracks do not satisfy this requirement.
- Bachelor’s degree in information technology, computer science, engineering, telecommunications, or a related discipline, or equivalent directly relevant experience. A master’s degree is a plus.
- Ten or more years of progressive experience in enterprise infrastructure, including significant architecture responsibility for large datacenter, cloud, and network environments.
- Demonstrated success designing complex Cisco network solutions and hybrid infrastructure architectures for medium to large enterprise clients.
- Hands-on architectural depth across datacenter networking, compute, virtualization, storage, cloud connectivity, network security, availability, disaster recovery, and migration planning.
- Experience developing architecture deliverables including diagrams, bills of material, design documents, migration roadmaps, test strategies, implementation assumptions, and technical statements of work.
- Excellent written, presentation, facilitation, and executive communication skills, with the ability to explain complex technical concepts clearly.
- Strong quantitative and financial skills, including solution estimation, lifecycle cost comparison, cloud-consumption analysis, and commercial risk identification.
- High proficiency with Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Visio or equivalent architecture-diagramming tools.
Preferred Qualifications
- Current Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert, AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Professional, or Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect certification is preferred. Google Cloud Professional Cloud Network Engineer is also a plus for candidates with hybrid and multi-cloud network architecture responsibilities.
- Relevant HPE certifications are preferred, including HPE ASE – Edge-to-Cloud Architect, HPE ASE – Compute Architect and Integrator, HPE ASE – Storage Architect and Integrator, or corresponding HPE Master ASE credentials.
- Additional Cisco certifications or specializations in data center, enterprise design, ACI, SD-WAN, security, automation, or cloud connectivity are preferred in addition to the required active CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure certification.
- Architecture or security credentials such as TOGAF, CISSP, CCSP, PCNSE, VMware VCP or VCAP, or Kubernetes certification.
- Experience with infrastructure as code and automation using Terraform, Ansible, Python, REST APIs, Git, CI/CD pipelines, or comparable tooling.
- Experience with Cisco ACI, Nexus, UCS, Catalyst Center, ISE, SD-WAN, Meraki, EVPN/VXLAN, and cloud network architectures.
- Experience designing infrastructure for regulated, highly available, geographically distributed, or operationally sensitive environments.
- Experience leading proofs of concept, technical workshops, migration assessments, architecture reviews, and design authority boards.
Core Competencies
- Architecture leadership: Creates coherent end-to-end designs and provides clear technical direction across infrastructure domains.
- Network depth: Applies CCIE Enterprise Infrastructure expertise to routing, switching, software-defined infrastructure, datacenter fabrics, hybrid connectivity, segmentation, resilience, and advanced troubleshooting.
- Cloud judgment: Selects appropriate cloud, on-premises, and colocation patterns based on workload, risk, performance, security, and economic requirements.
- Commercial awareness: Balances technical excellence with cost, schedule, scope, lifecycle, resource, and implementation constraints.
- Client influence: Builds trust with technical and executive stakeholders through structured discovery, evidence-based recommendations, and clear communication.
- Cross-functional collaboration: Aligns sales, engineering, security, delivery, finance, OEM, carrier, and partner teams without compromising architecture quality.
Physical and Mental Demands
The physical and mental demands described here are representative of those required to perform the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. Candidates must be able to travel occasionally to client sites, datacenters, colocation facilities, OEM briefings, and key project meetings.
Physical Demands
While performing the duties of this position, employees are regularly required to sit; communicate by voice and multimedia; use hands to operate standard office equipment; and reach with hands and arms. Specific vision abilities include close vision and the ability to adjust focus.
Mental Demands
Employees must effectively use written and oral communication skills; interpret technical, financial, and contractual information; analyze and solve complex problems; apply mathematical reasoning; learn and apply new technologies; manage detailed work across concurrent opportunities; and interact professionally with employees, clients, OEMs, carriers, and partners. The incumbent must maintain composure in a fast-paced, high-quality environment where individual and team accountability are defining factors.
General Office Environment
Work is generally performed from a home office environment with standard office equipment available. The position may require schedule adjustments to support international colleagues, clients, partners, architecture workshops, and planned technical activities across time zones.