Infra Architect

FalconSmartIT; Greater London; Hybrid; GBP 85,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

FalconSmartIT is seeking an experienced Infrastructure Architect to design, deliver, and sustain scalable infrastructure across cloud, on‑premises, and hybrid environments. You will partner with engineering, security, operations and business stakeholders to define architecture roadmaps and standards.

This contract/FTC (6 months) role requires strong expertise in networking, virtualization, containers, IaC, and cost optimization, with a proven ability to lead migrations and ensure compliance and

Qualifications

• Proven experience designing and delivering enterprise infrastructure solutions across cloud and on-premises environments.
• Hands-on experience with at least one public cloud (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and strong understanding of cloud-native services.
• Solid background in networking, virtualization, and storage technologies.
• Experience with containers and orchestration platforms (Docker, Kubernetes) and related tooling.
• Strong knowledge of security controls for infrastructure and IAM, network segmentation, encryption, and vulnerability management.
• Experience implementing infrastructure automation and IaC (Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible, etc.).
• Familiar with monitoring, observability, and logging solutions.
• Experience in high availability, DR planning, backup technologies, and capacity planning.
• Excellent communication skills for presenting architecture to stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Design and architect infrastructure solutions across cloud and on‑premises environments.
• Lead cloud migrations, platform consolidations, and modernization projects.
• Collaborate with DevOps, security, and engineering teams to ensure secure configurations and automation.
• Drive infrastructure automation using IaC tools and CI/CD practices.
• Evaluate and run POCs to assess new infrastructure products and costs.
• Create capacity planning, performance tuning, and cost-optimization strategies.
• Define disaster recovery, business continuity, and high-availability plans.
• Produce architecture artifacts and runbooks; mentor engineering teams.

Skills

Cloud architecture

Infrastructure design

Security controls

Networking

Virtualization

Containers/Kubernetes

IaC

CI/CD

Stakeholder communication

Migration planning

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/IT

Tools

Terraform

CloudFormation

Ansible

Docker

Kubernetes

VMware

Job description

Job Title: Infra Architect

Job Location: Guildford Business Park Guildford Surrey GU2 8XG

Job Type: Contract/FTC (6 months duration)

Infrastructure Technical Architect Job Description

Role Summary

An Infrastructure Technical Architect is responsible for designing, delivering, and sustaining scalable, secure, and cost-effective infrastructure solutions that support business applications and services. This role partners with engineering, security, operations, and business stakeholders to define architecture roadmaps, technical standards, and best practices across on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and architect infrastructure solutions across cloud (AWS/Azure/GCP) and on-premises environments to meet performance, availability, security, and compliance requirements.
• Define and maintain infrastructure reference architectures, standards, and patterns for networking, compute, storage, virtualization, containers, and platform services.
• Lead infrastructure transformation initiatives such as cloud migrations, platform consolidations, and modernization projects.
• Collaborate with application architects, DevOps, and security teams to ensure integration, automation, and secure configuration of platforms and services.
• Drive infrastructure automation using IaC tools (Terraform, CloudFormation, ARM, Ansible, etc.) and CI/CD practices to reduce manual effort and improve consistency.
• Evaluate new infrastructure products and services; run POCs and vendor assessments to recommend cost-effective solutions.
• Create capacity planning, performance tuning, and cost-optimization strategies; provide lifecycle management guidance for infrastructure components.
• Define and support disaster recovery, business continuity, backup, and high-availability strategies and plans.
• Produce and maintain architecture artifacts: solution diagrams, runbooks, standards, technical proposals, and ROI/impact assessments.
• Mentor and coach engineering and operations teams on architecture best practices, design reviews, and technical decisions.
• Participate in incident reviews and postmortems to recommend architecture or process changes to reduce recurrence.

Required Experience & Qualifications

• Proven experience designing and delivering enterprise infrastructure solutions across cloud and on-premises environments.
• Hands-on experience with at least one public cloud (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and strong understanding of cloud-native services and architectures.
• Solid background in networking (routing, switching, LB, VPN, DNS), virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V), and storage technologies.
• Experience with containers and orchestration platforms (Docker, Kubernetes) and related tooling.
• Strong knowledge of security controls for infrastructure: identity & access management, network segmentation, encryption, and vulnerability management.
• Experience implementing infrastructure automation and IaC (Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible, etc.).
• Familiar with monitoring, observability and logging solutions (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK, Datadog, etc.).
• Experience in high-availability, DR planning, backup technologies, and capacity planning.
• Excellent communication skills and experience presenting architecture and trade-offs to technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Bachelor s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or equivalent experience.

Preferred Certifications

• Cloud certifications: AWS Certified Solutions Architect, Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect, or Google Professional Cloud Architect.
• Infrastructure and architecture certifications: TOGAF, Cisco CCNA/CCNP, VMware VCP.
• Certifications in security or DevOps tools are a plus (e.g., CISSP, CISM, HashiCorp Certified).

Behavioral & Leadership Competencies

• Strategic thinker with pragmatic delivery focus.
• Strong problem-solving and decision-making under ambiguity.
• Ability to influence across multiple teams and senior stakeholders.
• Mentoring and team enablement mindset.
• Customer-centric approach and attention to operational excellence.

Success Metrics / KPIs

• Reduction in unplanned downtime and incident recurrence related to infrastructure.
• Successful delivery of migrations and platform projects within scope, time, and budget.
• Measurable improvement in automation coverage and deployment consistency.
• Infrastructure cost optimization metrics and improved resource utilization.
• Adoption of architecture standards and reduction in ad hoc platform implementations.

Working Context

• Works closely with Development, Security, Operations, and Product teams.
• May require occasional travel for stakeholder meetings or vendor engagements.
• Role can be onsite, hybrid, or remote depending on company policy.

Regards,

Rachana

[e-mail]