Virtualization Enterprise Architect

London / Hybrid - Fully Remote (must be UK based)

World Wide Technology is looking for an Enterprise Architect who lives and breathes virtualization and private cloud platform, someone equally fluent architecting a VMware vSphere/NSX estate and a Red Hat Open Shift or Open Stack platform, and who can lead clients through the platform decisions reshaping this space, including VMware to Kubernetes migration.

This role owns technical delivery for virtualization and private cloud engagements end to end: architecture and low level design, build oversight, migration execution, and operational handover. The candidate will be the final technical authority on virtualization platform decisions for their engagements, while mentoring the wider delivery team.

Given how tightly virtualization now intersects with containers, storage, networking, and even AI infrastructure, strong adjacent technical breadth is a real advantage for this role, even though platform depth in VMware and Red Hat remains the core requirement.

• Own end-to-end technical delivery of virtualization and private cloud engagements: architecture definition, low level design, build/migration oversight, and go‑live validation.
• Host and chair Architecture Review Board (ARB) and Technical Design Authority (TDA) sessions for virtualization engagements, owning governance gates, decision records, and design sign‑off.
• Architect and validate VMware environments: vSphere/ESXi cluster design, vCenter, vSAN, NSX‑T/NSX‑V network virtualization, and VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) deployments.
• Architect Red Hat platforms:
  Open Shift Container Platform (OCP) design and installation (IPI/UPI), Open Shift Virtualization (Kube Virt) for VM‑to‑container consolidation, and Red Hat Open Stack Platform (RHOSP) design and deployment.
• Lead VMware to Kubernetes and VM to container migration strategy engagements, including workload assessment, sequencing, and risk mitigation – particularly relevant given ongoing VMware/Broadcom licensing changes driving client reevaluation.
• Design software‑defined storage and networking as applied to virtualization platforms: vSAN, Ceph/Open Shift Data Foundation (ODF), and NSX.
• Define disaster recovery and business continuity architectures for virtualized estates, including Site Recovery Manager and equivalent DR orchestration.
• Lead technical design workshops, present architecture options and trade‑offs to infrastructure leadership, and own resulting low‑level design documentation.
• Champion infrastructure as code and automation (Ansible, Terraform, Git Ops/ArgoCD) to reduce manual platform operations.
• Mentor other virtualization and platform engineers, and contribute to WWT's private cloud reference architectures.
• Define migrations strategies

• 8–10+ years in virtualization, private cloud, or infrastructure architecture roles.
• Demonstrated ownership of technical delivery for enterprise scale virtualization or private cloud transformation programmes.
• Direct hands‑on experience with VMware to Kubernetes or VM to container migration engagements strongly preferred.

• Core platform: vSphere/ESXi cluster design, vCenter architecture, resource pools, DRS/HA tuning.
• Storage: vSAN design and sizing, stretched clusters, storage policy‑based management.
• Networking: NSX‑T/NSX‑V network virtualization, micro‑segmentation, and distributed firewall design.
• Platform: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) deployment and lifecycle management.
• DR & VDI: Site Recovery Manager design;
  Horizon VDI architecture is a plus.
• Open Shift: Open Shift Container Platform (OCP) architecture and installation (IPI/UPI), cluster networking (SDN/OVN‑Kubernetes), and multi‑cluster design.
• Open Shift Virtualization: Kube Virt‑based VM‑to‑container consolidation strategy and implementation.
• Open Stack: Red Hat Open Stack Platform (RHOSP) architecture, deployment, and lifecycle operations.
• Automation: Red Hat Satellite and Ansible Automation Platform for lifecycle and configuration management.

• Kubernetes architecture fundamentals: control plane design, networking…