Infrastructure Lead

Contract: Infrastructure Lead

Start Date: ASAP (After background check completion)

Duration: 6 month (extendable)

Rate: £500-£550 a day (Deemed inside IR35 via umbrella)

Location: Hybrid - 3 days a week on site in West Yorkshire

Reference: 20659



We are seeking an experienced Infrastructure Lead/Manager to lead the day-to-day operations of a mission-critical data centre environment in a pre-production environment. You will be responsible for ensuring high availability, operational excellence, infrastructure reliability, and the effective management of technical teams. This role requires strong experience with VMware technologies and hands-on laboratory/testing environments to support infrastructure validation, proof of concepts, and operational readiness.

Key Responsibilities

• Manage the daily operations of enterprise data centre facilities.
• Ensure maximum uptime and availability of compute, storage, network, and virtual infrastructure.
• Lead infrastructure projects including upgrades, migrations, capacity planning, and technology refreshes.
• Manage VMware virtualisation platforms including installation, configuration, optimisation, and troubleshooting.
• Maintain and manage lab environments for testing infrastructure changes, firmware updates, disaster recovery procedures, and proof-of-concept deployments.
• Develop and maintain operational procedures, standards, and documentation.
• Monitor infrastructure performance and implement proactive improvements.
• Manage relationships with hardware, software, and service vendors.
• Manage budgets, contracts, asset lifecycle, and capacity planning.
• Mentor and develop technical engineers and operational staff.

Required Experience

• 5+ years' experience managing enterprise data centre operations.
• Extensive experience administering VMware vSphere environments.
• Strong experience with: VMware ESXi / VMware vCenter / VMware vMotion / VMware HA & DRS / VMware Lifecycle Manager
• Experience building and maintaining technical lab environments for infrastructure testing and validation.
• Experience managing physical server infrastructure from vendors such as Dell, HPE, Cisco, or Lenovo.
• Experience with SAN/NAS storage technologies.
• Knowledge of enterprise networking including switching, routing, VLANs, and firewalls.
• Experience with backup and disaster recovery solutions.
• Strong understanding of Windows Server and Linux environments.

• Active Directory / DNS/DHCP / SAN Storage / Fibre Channel / iSCSI / Network fundamentals / PowerShell scripting/

• Experience with monitoring platforms and infrastructure automation tools.

Desirable Skills

• Azure or AWS infrastructure
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Ansible)
• ITIL certification

Networking People (UK) is acting as an Employment Business in relation to this vacancy.