Lead Infrastructure Engineer

Sopra Steria; Farnborough; On-site; GBP 58,500 - 71,500; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

25 days annual leave

Health cash plan

Life assurance

Pension

Job summary

Sopra Steria is seeking a Lead Infrastructure Engineer in Farnborough to support large scale projects in the Aerospace Defence and Security sector. You will be responsible for VMware vSphere administration and automation scripting, focusing on creating resilient storage environments for key clients.

The position involves deep VMWare knowledge and is suitable for candidates eligible for DV clearance. An attractive salary of up to £65,000 is offered, alongside benefits such as 25 days annual leave and a health cash plan.

Qualifications

• Deep experience managing ESXi hosts, vCenter, clusters, and resource pools.
• Experience in designing, deploying, and maintaining hyper-converged storage environments.
• Understanding of high availability and failover planning.

Responsibilities

• Responsible for all aspects of VMware vSphere administration.
• Management of ESXi hosts, vCenter, clusters, and resource pools.
• Designing, deploying, and maintaining hyper-converged storage environments.
• Automation via PowerCLI scripting and automated provisioning.

Skills

VMware vSphere administration

Automation scripting

Hyper-converged storage design

VMware networking

Experience with VDI environments

Job description

Are you a VMWare specialist with a background in Infrastructure Engineering at scale?

Sopra Steria’s Aerospace Defence and Security sector are currently on the lookout for a Lead Infrastructure Engineer to support a large scale project. The scope of the project is to build out a new environment for key clients in the defence sector following an “Automation first” mindset. In terms of skill set we would be looking for candidates with deep VMWare knowledge and experience with automation scripting and provisioning.

This role is working on site in Farnborough.

Due to the nature of the clients and sensitive projects, we are only able to progress with candidates eligible for DV clearance.

What you’ll be doing:

• Responsible for all aspects of VMware vSphere administration.
• Management of ESXi hosts, vCenter, clusters, and resource pools.
• Designing, deploying, and maintaining hyper‑converged storage environments.
• Automation: PowerCLI scripting, template creation, and automated provisioning.

What you’ll bring:

• VMware vSphere administration: Deep experience managing ESXi hosts, vCenter, clusters, and resource pools.
• vSAN: Designing, deploying, and maintaining hyper‑converged storage environments.
• HA/DRS configuration: Building resilient clusters with high availability, distributed resource scheduling, and failover planning.
• VMware networking: Strong understanding of vSwitches, distributed switches, VLANs, port groups, and network segmentation.
• VMware Horizon: Experience with VDI environments, image management, and application delivery (desirable if relevant).

If you’re interested in this role but not sure if your skills and experience are exactly what we’re looking for, please do apply, we’d love to hear from you!

Employment Type: Full-time, Permanent

Location: Farnborough

Security Clearance Level: DV

Salary: Up to £65,000

Benefits: 25 days annual leave with the choice to buy additional days, health cash plan, life assurance, and pension.

Although this role is advertised as full-time, we believe that flexibility at work can promote work/life balance, increase your motivation, reduce stress and improves performance and productivity. We support different ways of working and can offer a range of flexible working arrangements. So, if you’re interested and need to work flexibly, we encourage you to apply and talk to us about what might be possible.

Sopra Steria’s Aerospace, Defence and Security business designs, develops and deploys digital solutions to Central Government clients. The work we do makes a real difference to the client’s goal of National Security, and we operate in a unique and privileged environment. We provide time for professional development activities, and we coach and mentor our colleagues, sharing knowledge and learning from each other. We foster a culture in which employees feel valued and supported and have pride in their work for the customer, delivering outstanding rates of customer satisfaction in the UK’s most complex safety- and security‑critical markets.

We embrace difference as a source of creativity, innovation and competitive advantage and are striving to become a more diverse organisation. We welcome applications from people with a diverse variety of backgrounds and identities. We are committed to equality of opportunity for all and do not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, colour, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation or marital status. We have partnered with Vercida, the UK's largest diversity and inclusion focused careers site, where all our vacancies are available in an accessible format.

If you require any adjustments to the recruitment process, to enable you to perform to the best of your ability, please let us know when completing your application. We participate in the Disability Confident scheme and are committed to offering an interview to any candidate with a disability, who meets the minimum criteria for the role. If this could apply to you, please let us know when completing your application.