Virtualization and Systems Architect

About the Company

Ritter Communications, headquartered in Jonesboro, Arkansas, is the largest privately held telecom provider serving the Mid‑South. Recognized as one of Arkansas's Best Places to Work for five years running, we deliver world‑class broadband fiber, telecom, video, and data center services.

With rapid growth and millions invested in advanced infrastructure, we now serve 197 communities and over 60,000 customers across six states. At Ritter Communications, our team combines cutting‑edge technology with a customer‑first mindset – and we're looking for talented individuals who share our passion for excellence and community impact.

The Virtualization and Systems Architect is responsible for the design and standardization of virtualization, bare‑metal infrastructure, and accompanying systems running within the company's service provider environment.

This role requires an expert level understanding of private and public virtualization along with storage and disaster recovery.

• Architecture Design:
  Architect storage, compute, and networking for all bare metal and virtual systems, while also meeting the company's needs for scalability, performance, and security.
• Cloud Solutions:
  Develop strategies for locally hosted cloud storage solutions and virtual environments.
• Performance Optimization:
  Monitor and optimize storage performance, capacity planning, resource utilization, and licensing planning.
• Data Management:
  Ensure data integrity, availability, and security across all storage systems and virtual environments.
• Disaster Recovery:
  Design and train on disaster recovery solutions and backup strategies for cloud environments.
• Collaboration:
  
  Work closely with cross‑functional teams, including Architecture, Dev Ops, Engineering groups, and security professionals, to ensure seamless integration of storage and virtualization solutions.
• Documentation:
  Maintain comprehensive documentation of architectures, configurations, and processes.
• Research and Development:
  Stay current with industry trends and emerging technologies to ensure our storage and virtualization strategies remain competitive.
• Support and Training:
  Provide technical support, training, scripting, and final escalation to operational and sales groups regarding storage and virtualization technologies.
• Budget Planning:
  Establish life cycles and budgets for all virtual environments and associated equipment.
• Network Fabric:
  Work with the Architecture and operational groups on software‑defined cloud‑scale network fabric.
• Approve baselines of firmware, antivirus and security patches across all platforms.
• Lead change control by reviewing changes for technical accuracy and risk analysis.
• Partner with external vendors on solution architecture and procurement.
• Establish and maintain policies, procedures, and technical documentation.
• Provide escalation support for Sales and other engineering groups.
• Provide leadership to identify, manage, and resolve risks in a team environment.
• Work independently with little supervision on day‑to‑day tasks, receiving general instructions on new assignments.
• Support systems in a 24x7 data center.
• Travel to project areas, business‑related events, and other Ritter Communications locations as required.
• Perform other duties as required.

• Deep understanding of virtualization systems on hyper‑converged infrastructure including Microsoft Azure Stack HCI and VMware with vSAN.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills to both technical and non‑technical stakeholders.
• Proficient working with Microsoft Azure public and private cloud infrastructure.
• Comprehensive automation and scripting abilities (Power Shell, REST, Python, etc.).
• Strong understanding of data protection/business continuity industry standards (Veeam is a plus).
• Software‑defined networking experience, including Cisco ACI and Microsoft Windows.
• Working knowledge of System Center Virtual Machine Manager and VMware vCenter.
• Project management experience creating and maintaining project plans.
• Clear understanding of security best practices in multi‑tenant environments.
• Experience working under compliance of industry…