IT Infrastructure Architect

Bdpinternational•Houston, TX

About The Position

POSITION SUMMARY We are seeking a seasoned Infrastructure Architect to design and drive the technical direction of our technology platform. This is a senior individual contributor role focused on hands-on architecture across cloud, on-premises, DevOps/platform, and security domains. You will own high-impact technical decisions, set standards and patterns for the broader engineering organization, and serve as the go-to expert for infrastructure strategy. The ideal candidate combines deep multi-cloud expertise, a pragmatic approach to hybrid environments, and the communication skills to translate complex infrastructure concepts into business value. Note on Scope: This is an IT Infrastructure role, not an Enterprise Architecture (EA) position. The Infrastructure Architect operates at the implementation and delivery layer — designing, building, and operating infrastructure systems. The role works in close partnership with the EA team to ensure infrastructure decisions align with enterprise-wide architectural standards, roadmaps, and governance. Candidates should expect regular collaboration with EA but will not be responsible for enterprise-level application or business architecture.

Requirements

8+ years of progressive infrastructure engineering experience, with a track record of driving architecture decisions at scale.
Hands-on expertise with at least two major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP); cloud certifications (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect Professional, Azure Expert) preferred.
Deep knowledge of networking fundamentals: routing, switching, BGP, firewalls, TLS/PKI.
Proficiency with IaC tools (Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation) and source control workflows.
Experience architecting and operating container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes) in production at scale.
Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to produce clear architecture documentation and present to senior stakeholders.
Demonstrated ability to design for high availability, security, and compliance in regulated or enterprise environments.

Nice To Haves

Experience with hybrid/multi-cloud connectivity (AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, SD-WAN).
Familiarity with FinOps practices and cloud cost governance tooling (AWS Cost Explorer, CloudHealth, Apptio).
Scripting and automation skills in Python, Go, or Bash.
Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) and API gateway platforms.
Prior involvement in SOC 2, PCI-DSS, or HIPAA audit processes.
CISSP, CISM, AWS/Azure/GCP Professional certification, or equivalent.

Responsibilities

Define and own the enterprise infrastructure reference architecture spanning cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP), on-premises data centers, and hybrid connectivity.
Lead the evaluation, selection, and lifecycle management of infrastructure platforms, tools, and vendors.
Design scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant systems that meet SLA and RTO/RPO targets.
Establish Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) standards using Terraform, Pulumi, or equivalent; champion GitOps practices.
Drive cloud migration and modernization roadmaps, including workload assessment, re-platforming, and cost optimization.
Architect network topologies including VPCs, VPNs, SD-WAN, DNS, load balancing, and CDN strategies.
Produce architecture decision records (ADRs), design documentation, and reference implementations that the broader team can follow.
Provide architectural oversight of production cloud environments (AWS, Azure, and/or GCP) for reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.
Guide on-premises and colocation infrastructure strategy: compute (VMware/bare metal), storage, and networking.
Define capacity planning, disaster recovery, and business continuity strategies.
Serve as escalation owner for P1/P2 infrastructure incidents; participate in on-call rotation.
Design and evolve the observability stack (metrics, logs, traces) using Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent.
Design and improve CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) to enable rapid, reliable software delivery.
Architect Kubernetes platform strategy (EKS, AKS, GKE, or self-managed): cluster topology, workload placement, autoscaling, and resource policies.
Define developer experience standards by designing self-service platform capabilities, internal developer portals, and golden paths.
Promote SRE practices: SLOs, error budgets, chaos engineering, and blameless post-mortems.
Embed security into infrastructure from the ground up: zero-trust networking, IAM least-privilege, secrets management, and encryption at rest/in transit.
Partner with the security team to achieve and maintain compliance certifications (SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA) as applicable.
Define vulnerability management, patching cadence, and infrastructure hardening standards.
Design infrastructure-level controls for regulatory requirements and audit readiness.
Act as a technical advisor and subject matter expert; provide architecture reviews and guidance to engineering teams.
Collaborate cross-functionally with Engineering, Product, Security, and Finance stakeholders to align infrastructure strategy with business goals.
Partner with the Enterprise Architecture (EA) team to ensure infrastructure designs, standards, and roadmaps align with enterprise architectural principles and governance — this role supports and implements EA direction but does not own enterprise-level architecture.
Translate EA standards and reference architectures into concrete, executable infrastructure designs and patterns.
Mentor engineers informally through design reviews, pair work, and documentation — without direct reporting responsibility.
Evaluate and manage vendor and technology partnerships, and contribute to infrastructure budget planning and optimization.