Senior Storage & Data Infrastructure Architect

SmartChoice International GCC; Abu Dhabi Emirate; On-site; AED 420,000 - 540,000; Full time

Job summary

SmartChoice International GCC is seeking a Senior Infrastructure Architect with deep expertise in storage, data protection and resilience to shape large-scale cloud and infrastructure environments. The role requires translating complex requirements into robust architectural solutions and long-term platform strategies.

You will lead design across block, file and object storage, influence technology roadmaps, and collaborate with engineering and cloud teams to ensure secure, scalable deployments

Qualifications

• Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Technology or a related discipline.
• 10+ years of experience in infrastructure architecture with enterprise-scale storage experience.
• Strong expertise across block, file and object storage, including software-defined and distributed storage architectures.
• Proven experience designing large-scale, highly available and geographically distributed storage platforms.
• Deep understanding of storage architecture, data protection, backup, disaster recovery and resilience principles.
• Strong knowledge of storage networking and data access technologies (NFS, S3, iSCSI, NVMe).
• Experience with OpenStack or comparable cloud infrastructure environments is highly desirable.
• Experience with distributed and software-defined storage technologies.
• Strong security, encryption, access controls, hardening and compliance in infrastructure platforms.
• Experience with cloud-native backup, replication and disaster recovery technologies; strong Linux scripting skills.

Responsibilities

• Lead the architecture and design of large-scale block, file and object storage platforms across cloud and infrastructure environments.
• Define architectural standards, technology roadmaps and evolution of storage and data protection services.
• Translate complex requirements into practical technical architectures for performance, scalability and security.
• Evaluate storage, backup and data protection technologies and make recommendations.
• Design resilient data protection and disaster recovery strategies with RPO/RTO considerations.
• Lead capacity, performance and lifecycle planning for storage environments.
• Conduct architecture reviews to improve resilience, efficiency and operational risk.
• Produce high/low-level architecture documentation and procurement material.
• Support technology selection and vendor evaluation for major investments.
• Work with engineering teams to ensure implementation aligns with the architecture.
• Define monitoring, observability and logging requirements across storage platforms.
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship to infrastructure teams.

Skills

Storage architecture

Linux administration

Python/Bash scripting

Architecture documentation

Stakeholder management

Cloud infrastructure

Education

Bachelor's or Master's degree in CS/Engineering/IT

Tools

OpenStack

Terraform/Ansible

Job description

SmartChoice International GCC is seeking a Senior Infrastructure Architect with deep expertise in storage, data protection and resilience to shape large-scale cloud and infrastructure environments. The role requires translating complex requirements into robust architectural solutions and long-term platform strategies.

You will lead design across block, file and object storage, influence technology roadmaps, and collaborate with engineering and cloud teams to ensure secure, scalable deployments