Private Cloud Senior Architect

HelloKindred; Sheffield; On-site; GBP 120,000 - 155,000; Full time

Job summary

HelloKindred is seeking a Senior Architect in Private Cloud to provide hands-on technical leadership across a private cloud platform, shaping virtualization, containers, Kubernetes, and Kafka-based event streaming to deliver secure, scalable services.

You will partner with Product Owners and engineering teams to translate cloud strategy into practical outcomes, define standards, and drive end-to-end design with a focus on security, reliability, and performance.

Qualifications

• Extensive experience in private cloud and platform engineering.
• Hands-on automation with Infrastructure as Code.
• Strong security and production-readiness practices.
• Experience with multi-region or active-active architectures is desirable.

Responsibilities

• Make architectural design decisions aligned with the Cloud Strategy.
• Set engineering direction for private cloud capabilities spanning virtualization, containers, Kubernetes, Kafka/event streaming, and microservices enablement.
• Act as a senior technical authority by reviewing designs, challenging assumptions, and ensuring solutions are secure and cost-effective.
• Define and promote engineering standards, reference architectures, patterns, and guardrails.

Skills

Cloud architecture

Kubernetes

Platform engineering

Security by design

Tools

VMware

Kafka

CI/CD

GitOps

Job description

HelloKindred are specialists in staffing marketing, creative and technology roles, offering a range of talent solutions that can be delivered on-site, remotely or hybrid.

Our vision is to make work accessible and people’s lives better.We do this by disrupting traditional employment barriers –connecting ambitious talent to flexible opportunities with trusted brands.

Job Description

Anticipated Contract End Date/Length: December 25, 2026, with potential to extend
Work Setup: Hybrid (3 days per week in office, 40% remote)
Clearance Required: BPSS eligibility

Our client in the Information Technology and Services industry is looking for a Senior Architect in Private Cloud to provide hands-on technical leadership across a private cloud platform, shaping and improving virtualisation, container, and Kubernetes capabilities while enabling resilient, secure, and high-performing services, including Kafka-based event streaming and microservices platforms.

Report to the Head of Private Cloud and partner closely with Product Owners, architects, and engineering teams to translate cloud strategy into practical, well-engineered outcomes. Provide senior technical authority across platform architecture, engineering standards, security, operational excellence, and platform evolution.

What you will do:

• Make architectural design decisions aligned with the Cloud Strategy.
• Set engineering direction for private cloud capabilities spanning virtualisation, containers, Kubernetes, Kafka/event streaming, and microservices enablement.
• Act as a senior technical authority by reviewing designs, challenging assumptions, and ensuring solutions are supportable, secure, and cost-effective.
• Define and promote engineering standards, reference architectures, patterns, and guardrails that enable consistent delivery.
• Lead the end-to-end design and evolution of private cloud platform components, including compute, storage, networking, orchestration, and platform services.
• Drive consistent platform capabilities across development, test, and production environments to improve reliability, scalability, performance, and operability.
• Influence platform roadmaps with Product Owners and translate business and technology needs into actionable engineering plans.
• Own key decisions for Kubernetes platform design, including cluster architecture, multi-tenancy, ingress, service mesh where applicable, policy, secrets, observability, upgrade strategies, and workload onboarding.
• Establish repeatable deployment patterns using GitOps, CI/CD, configuration management, and automation-first approaches.
• Provide technical leadership for Kafka platform usage and enablement, including topic design patterns, partitioning strategy, resiliency, schema governance, security, monitoring, and capacity planning.
• Partner with architects and service teams to adopt event-driven patterns safely and consistently.
• Coach teams on microservices design, domain boundaries, API and event contracts, resiliency patterns, and operational readiness.
• Improve developer experience through templates, golden paths, self-service capabilities, and clear documentation.
• Embed security-by-design and operational excellence through hardening, vulnerability management, identity and access controls, data protection, and auditability.
• Bridge Product, Architecture, and Engineering teams to establish alignment and deliver pragmatic outcomes.
• Communicate complex technical topics clearly to mixed audiences and produce concise design documentation for decision forums.
• Build strong partnerships across Product, Architecture, Engineering, Cyber Security, Operations/SRE, and relevant governance forums.
• Make clear technical trade-offs, own decisions, and proactively reduce operational and security risks.
• Drive pragmatic outcomes, remove blockers, and raise engineering quality while maintaining delivery pace.
• Support faster and safer workload onboarding through repeatable patterns and self-service capabilities.
• Improve platform stability and performance through measurable reliability outcomes, including SLOs, reduced incidents, and faster recovery.
• Establish and promote clear standards for Kubernetes, Kafka, and microservices usage across engineering teams.
• Strengthen collaboration across Product, Architecture, and Engineering through transparent roadmaps and well-governed technical decisions.

Qualifications

• Proven experience as an Architect, Engineer, Lead Engineer, Senior Staff Engineer, or equivalent within large-scale, regulated, enterprise environments.
• Strong background in private cloud and platform engineering, with solid depth in at least two of the following: virtualisation technologies such as VMware or equivalent; containers and Kubernetes, including cluster operations, upgrades, networking, multi-tenant, and policy; or Kafka/event streaming platforms covering architecture, operations, and governance.
• Strong engineering fundamentals across distributed systems, networking concepts, performance tuning, fault tolerance, and capacity planning.
• Hands-on automation mindset with experience in Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD practices, with tooling adaptable to the environment.
• Strong operational and risk awareness, including security controls, change management, and production readiness practices.
• Experience with service mesh, API gateways, secrets management, or policy-as-code is desirable.
• Practical experience with observability platforms covering metrics, logs, and traces, together with incident leadership capabilities.
• Experience building "platform as a product" capabilities such as service catalogues, self-service solutions, or developer portals.
• Familiarity with multi-region or active-active architecture considerations and resilience testing.
• Ability to welcome technical challenge, encourage diverse perspectives, and create space for different voices in technical discussions.
• Strong partnership and influencing skills across Product, Architecture, Engineering, Cyber Security, and Operations teams.
• Ability to make clear trade-offs, take ownership of technical decisions, and proactively address operational and security risks.
• Pragmatic, delivery-focused approach with the ability to remove blockers and improve engineering quality at pace.

Additional Information

All your information will be kept confidential according to EEO guidelines.

Candidates must be legally authorized to live and work in the country where the position is based, without requiring employer sponsorship.

HelloKindred is committed to fair, transparent, and inclusive hiring practices. We assess candidates based on skills, experience, and role-related requirements.

We appreciate your interest in this opportunity. While we review every application carefully, only candidates selected for an interview will be contacted.

HelloKindred is an equal opportunity employer. We welcome applicants of all backgrounds and do not discriminate on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, age, national origin, disability, veteran status, or any other protected characteristic under applicable law.