Head of Infrastructure Architecture - Executive Director

Mizuho EMEA; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 120,000 - 180,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive starting salary

Discretionary bonus

Non-contributory pension

27 days’ annual leave

Hybrid working - office and home based

Virtual GP

Wellbeing benefits

Job summary

Mizuho EMEA is seeking a Head of Infrastructure Architecture - Executive Director to drive the target-state architecture across end-user compute, data centres and cloud. You will own consolidation, standards, resilience and cost governance while partnering across engineering teams.

The role focuses on establishing a unified platform, leading a complex migration programme, and delivering a measurable reduction in estate while maintaining regulatory integrity and performance.

Qualifications

• Substantial infrastructure architecture experience in a regulated enterprise.
• End-to-end data centre consolidation, migration or exit.
• Ownership of a VDI or end-user compute estate at enterprise scale.
• Hands-on architecture across major public cloud with landing zone design.

Responsibilities

• Define target-state infrastructure architecture for VDI, data centres and cloud.
• Lead data centre rationalisation: discovery, mapping, migration waves and lease alignment.
• Consolidate VDI and end-user compute estate with platform migration strategy.
• Design cloud landing zones, network topology, identity integration and hybrid connectivity.
• Establish infrastructure standards: compute, storage, patching and IaC baselines.
• Own resilience architecture including DR, RTO/RPO and testing.
• Build infrastructure cost model and drive cost governance.

Skills

VDI/EUC

Azure Virtual Desktop

Citrix

VMware Horizon

Windows 365

Public cloud

Tools

ExpressRoute

Direct Connect

Identity integration

Hybrid connectivity

Job description

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Head of Infrastructure Architecture - Executive Director

The DevSecOps architect will enable delivery of:

• Published target-state infrastructure architecture and placement policy, endorsed at Design Authority.
• Agreed and sequenced data centre exit plan with named workloads, waves and dates.
• VDI consolidation roadmap approved, with the first platform migration wave delivered.
• Baseline infrastructure cost model established, and a measurable reduction path committed.

Own the target-state infrastructure architecture across end-user compute, data centre estate and cloud, and drive the consolidation of three historically separate estates into one coherent, cost-managed platform. This is a consolidation and exit role as much as a design role: the measure of success is estate reduction, not estate growth.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Define the target-state infrastructure architecture spanning virtual desktop infrastructure, physical and colocated data centres, and public cloud, with a clear placement policy governing what runs where and why.
• Lead the data centre rationalisation programme: workload discovery and dependency mapping, migration wave planning, exit sequencing, and lease/contract alignment.
• Consolidate the VDI and end-user compute estate — rationalise brokers, images, profile management and licensing; define persona-based desktop patterns; set the roadmap from legacy VDI toward a single strategic platform.
• Design cloud landing zones, network topology, identity integration, and hybrid connectivity to support migration at scale without re-platforming the operating model per application.
• Establish infrastructure standards: compute and storage tiering, virtualisation, backup and archive, patching, and infrastructure-as-code baselines.
• Own resilience architecture — disaster recovery tiering, recovery time and point objectives, failover design and testing — aligned to operational resilience and important business service requirements.
• Build and maintain the infrastructure cost model; drive unit economics, capacity forecasting and rightsizing; make consumption visible to service owners.
• Partner with network, security, EUC and platform engineering teams to sequence dependencies and avoid stranded estate.
• Provide assurance at Design Authority for infrastructure change; challenge project-level decisions that create new estate outside the target state.

Qualifications, Skills and Experience

• Substantial infrastructure architecture experience in a regulated enterprise, with at least one end-to-end data centre consolidation, migration or exit delivered.
• Demonstrable ownership of a VDI or end-user compute estate at enterprise scale, including a platform migration or consolidation.
• Hands-on architecture across at least one major public cloud, covering landing zone design, networking, identity and migration patterns.
• Proven capability in workload discovery and dependency analysis for legacy estate, including undocumented systems.
• Track record of infrastructure cost reduction supported by evidence, not forecast.

Technical skills:

• VDI / EUC: Citrix, Azure Virtual Desktop, VMware Horizon, Windows 365; image and profile management, application layering, session sizing
• Data centre: virtualisation platforms, SAN/NAS storage, converged and hyper-converged infrastructure, colocation and hosting models, capacity and power planning
• Cloud: Azure and/or AWS landing zones, hybrid connectivity (ExpressRoute, Direct Connect), migration tooling and patterns (rehost, re-platform, refactor)
• Resilience: DR design and testing, backup architecture, multi-site and multi-region patterns
• Financial services infrastructure experience, particularly low-latency or market-data-adjacent environments.
• Experience of mainframe or legacy midrange estate within a consolidation scope.
• Familiarity with FinOps practice and cloud cost governance tooling.

Key Behaviours and Competencies:

• Credibility with engineers, architects and senior stakeholders, with the ability to challenge constructively, influence technical direction and drive adoption of strategic infrastructure standards.
• Results-driven and accountable, maintaining focus on measurable outcomes including estate reduction, platform consolidation, resilience improvements and cost optimisation.
• Pragmatic and collaborative, able to balance business demands, operational risk and strategic objectives whilst leading complex technology transformation and migration initiatives.

What Mizuho Can Offer You

Here at Mizuho, there are fantastic progression opportunities and clear paths to promotion. We will give you ample opportunity to affect change and to help grow our business.

In addition to the great opportunity outlined above we are also currently able to offer:

• Competitive starting salary, plus discretionary bonus
• Non-contributory pension
• 27 days’ annual leave
• Core working hours*
• Hybrid working - office and home based*
• Virtual GP
• Wellbeing benefits, including Mental Health Allies and First Aiders

*For applicable roles only

At Mizuho, we embrace flexible ways of working when the role permits. We offer different working arrangements like part-time, job-sharing and hybrid (office and home) working. Our purpose-led culture and global infrastructure help us connect, collaborate, and work together in agile ways to meet all our business needs.

We are committed to supporting equality and diversity, and seek to create a workplace that is fully inclusive. We welcome applications from all sections of the community that we operate in and from all ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientation, beliefs, gender identities and disabilities

If you require more information about our equal opportunities policy or wish to discuss any accessibility requirements or reasonable adjustments please contact the recruitment team – [e-mail] and we will be happy to help.