Lead Virtual Infrastructure Architect - Hybrid

"Lead Virtual Infrastructure Architect - Hybrid – Permanent

United Kingdom

Posted Friday 19 December 2025 at 01:00

Lead virtual infrastructure architect - Hybrid – Permanent

Salary: Up to  60,000 per annum (negotiable based on experience) + comprehensive benefits package

Jisc grade: TCY3 (internal use only)

Hours: 35 hours per week

Reports into: Head of Architecture and Engineering

Working style: Hybrid - A blend of working from home and your nominated hub office. We have hubs located in London, Bristol, Manchester and Oxford.

Planned interviews: 12 th – 23 rd January (2 stages)

For 30 years Jisc has pioneered digital solutions for UK education and research, transforming how knowledge is created, shared and used.

We are uniquely positioned to protect, promote and lead the sector in digital and data transformation, making a difference to students, communities and society. Together, we are

working to build a better digital future for education and research.

Raise your potential at Jisc through our culture of lifelong learning. At Jisc, we're all about growth, so embrace new challenges, sharpen your skills and shape a career that excites you.

About the team:

The Architecture and Engineering team designs, operates, and protects the core infrastructure behind Jisc’s security services. Organised into Critical Infrastructure, Platform Services, and Core Services, the team ensures resilient, high‑performing systems that support trusted services across the UK. Your role will sit within the Core Services team, focusing on data centres, networking, and hypervisors, the backbone of national operations.

What you’ll be doing:

This role focuses on hypervisor and system administration, ensuring high availability and performance across nationally resilient data centres. You will play a pivotal role in architecting, operating, and continuously improving secure and resilient virtual infrastructure, from hypervisors to core systems, that underpins critical services for Jisc’s security department. In addition, you’ll be responsible for adopting and implementing automation, streamlining processes and operations across the technical estate, and driving scalable infrastructure‑as‑code management to deliver efficiency and resilience at every level.

You’ll take ownership of developing and leading our engineering teams, driving efforts to optimise system performance and scalability, so core systems meet business and security needs. Alongside this, you’ll lead the design, implementation, and maintenance of secure, resilient virtual infrastructure, including servers, operating systems, and key components, to safeguard critical services and technologies.

Other responsibilities will include:

• Identify risks and vulnerabilities in system architecture designs and develop and implement effective mitigations.
• Monitor system performance and security posture, proactively identifying and addressing vulnerabilities and emerging threats in line with defined security policies and procedures.
• Ensure systems are fully documented, operated within Jisc’s policy framework, and compliant with ISO
  9001 and ISO
  27001 standards.
• Foster a collaborative, inclusive culture within the cybersecurity team, encouraging knowledge sharing and continuous learning.

What we would love to see from you:

You bring proven experience as a security architect or in a similar role, with deep expertise in core systems infrastructure and large‑scale virtualised services. Alongside this technical strength, you demonstrate excellent communication and interpersonal skills, enabling effective collaboration across teams and the ability to influence key decisions.

Key skills and experience include:

• Knowledge of security principles and technologies, including identity and access management, encryption, data protection, and compliance frameworks, to support secure architecture design and improvement.
• Ability to communicate effectively and build strong relationships, collaborating across teams and influencing decisions.
• Experience of leading teams and managing operational engineers.
• Ability to collaborate effectively with cross‑functional teams to design, develop, and deploy…