Infrastructure Architect Job Deerfield area,Illinois USA,IT/Tech

Must Have Technical/Functional Skills

12+ years in enterprise infrastructure, 4+ years as Architect or Principal
Proven delivery of large on-premises data centre programmes
Multi-site enterprise WAN/LAN design and ownership
Design authority / ARB leadership experience
Enterprise customer-facing or managed services background preferred
Track record in regulated industries (FS, healthcare, public sector)
Data Centre: VMware vSphere/NSX/vSAN, Net App, Pure Storage, Dell EMC
Networking:
Cisco (CCIE-level knowledge), Juniper, Arista; BGP, OSPF, MPLS, SD-WAN
Security:
Palo Alto / Fortinet firewalls, Cyber Ark PAM, Zero Trust principles
Storage & Backup: SAN/NAS, Veeam, Zerto, Commvault
Monitoring:
Solar Winds, PRTG, Zabbix, Datadog
ITSM:
Service Now, ITIL v4 governance

Required/Preferred Certifications

Additional Desirable

Enterprise Architecture Leadership

Own and evolve the Enterprise Infrastructure Architecture (EIA) framework across on-premises, co-location, and hybrid environments.
Serve as Design Authority for all major infrastructure initiatives — chairing Architecture Review Boards (ARB) and Technical Design Authority (TDA) forums.
Produce and maintain authoritative architecture artefacts: reference architecture, HLDs, LLDs, standards documents, and technology roadmaps.
Engage directly with C-suite and senior business stakeholders to translate business requirements into infrastructure strategy.
Define technology lifecycle management strategies: refresh cycles, decommission plans, and vendor roadmap alignment.

Data Centre Architecture & Operations

Lead the design and governance of enterprise-grade on-premises data centres, including Tier III/IV facilities, Co-location, and private data halls.
Architect compute platforms: bare-metal servers, rack design, blade systems, and high-density configurations.
Define storage architecture: SAN (Fibre Channel, iSCSI), NAS, object storage (e.g. Net App, Pure Storage, Dell EMC, HPE Nimble).
Integrate infrastructure pipelines with enterprise CMDB (Service Now) for automated asset registration and compliance reporting.
Oversee power and cooling architecture: UPS systems, PDUs, hot/cold aisle containment, DCIM tooling, and PUE optimization.
Design and govern hypervisor and virtualization platforms: VMware vSphere/vSAN/NSX, Microsoft Hyper‑V, and KVM environments.
Lead data centre migration, consolidation, and modernization programs — from planning through cutover and Hypercare.
Define backup, replication, and disaster recovery architectures: RTO/RPO targets, DR site design, and regular DR testing governance.

Enterprise Networking Architecture

Architect and own the enterprise WAN, LAN, and data centre fabric — spanning campus, branch, and multi‑site environments.
Design and govern core/distribution/access layer switching architectures using vendors such as Cisco, Juniper, Arista, or HPE Aruba.
Lead SD‑WAN design and deployment programs, including overlay/underlay architecture, traffic engineering, and policy frameworks.
Architect MPLS, BGP, OSPF, IS‑IS, and VRF-based routing for complex multi‑site enterprise networks.
Design secure network segmentation: VLANs, VXLANs, micro‑segmentation, and macro‑segmentation strategies.
Define and govern enterprise firewall and perimeter security architecture (Palo Alto, Fortinet, Check Point, Cisco ASA/FTD).
Oversee load balancing architecture (F5, Citrix ADC / Net Scaler, HAProxy) across data centre and Application tiers.
Lead network performance management:
QoS frameworks, traffic shaping, capacity modelling, and link aggregation.
Define Out-of-Band (OOB) management network architecture and remote hands procedures.

Security Architecture & Compliance

Embed Zero Trust Network Architecture (ZTNA) principles across on-premises and hybrid environments.
Define IAM and PAM architecture:
Active Directory, LDAP, RADIUS, TACACS+, Cyber Ark, or equivalent.
Govern infrastructure…