Senior Architect - Private Cloud

Senior Architect Private Cloud (Banking and Finance client)

Location: Sheffield, UK(Hybrid, 2 days in a week)

6 months contract

10+ years of experience

Skills: Kubernetes, Kafka, VMware, Virtualization

Responsibilities:

• Define and drive Private Cloud architecture aligned with Client Cloud Strategy
• Provide hands on technical leadership across virtualization containers Kubernetes, Kafka and microservices platforms
• Review architecture designs and ensure solutions are secure scalable resilient and cost effective
• Establish engineering standards reference architectures reusable patterns and platform guardrails
• Lead the design and evolution of private cloud platform components including compute storage networking orchestration and platform services
• Drive platform consistency across development testing and production environments
• Translate business and technology requirements into actionable platform engineering roadmaps
• Own Kubernetes architecture decisions including cluster design multitenancy ingress service mesh secrets management observability upgrade strategies and workload onboarding
• Establish GitOps CICD automation and configuration management standards
• Provide technical leadership for Kafka and EventDriven Architecture adoption
• Define Kafka governance partitioning strategies resiliency patterns schema management monitoring and capacity planning
• Guide engineering teams on microservices architecture domain design resiliency API contracts and operational readiness
• Improve developer experience through selfservice capabilities templates golden paths and platform tooling
• Embed SecuritybyDesign identity management vulnerability management auditability and operational excellence practices
• Collaborate with Product Owners Architects Engineering Teams Cyber Security and SRE teams
• Influence technical strategy and engineering decisions across CTO platform domains

To be successful in this role you should have

• Proven experience as a Senior Architect Lead Engineer Staff Engineer Platform Architect or equivalent
• Strong Private Cloud and Platform Engineering background
• Deep expertise in at least two of the following
• VMware or Virtualization Technologies
• Kubernetes and Container Platforms
• KafkaEvent Streaming Platforms
• Strong Kubernetes experience including cluster operations networking upgrades multitenancy policy management observability and workload onboarding
• Strong Kafka architecture operations governance security and capacity planning experience
• Deep understanding of Distributed Systems Networking Fault Tolerance Performance Tuning and Capacity Planning
• Experience with Infrastructure as Code IaC and CICD practices
• Strong understanding of Security Controls Change Management Risk Management and Production Readiness
• Experience working in regulated enterprise environments
• Strong stakeholder management and technical leadership skills
• Excellent communication and architecture documentation capabilities
• Experience with Service Mesh technologies is desirable
• Knowledge of API Gateways Secrets Management and PolicyasCode is preferred
• Experience with Observability platforms including Metrics Logs and Traces
• Experience building PlatformasaProduct capabilities such as developer portals and selfservice platforms
• Knowledge of MultiRegion ActiveActive and Resilience Testing architectures is advantageous