Principal Architect, Network & Infrastructure

Enchanted Rock Management LLC•Houston, TX

3d•Hybrid

About The Position

We are ERock! Enchanted Rock is a leader and innovator of Electrical Resiliency-As-A-Service. Our advanced dual-purpose microgrids protect companies, critical infrastructure, and communities from unexpected power outages, ensuring business continuity and civic durability. Enchanted Rock’s dual-purpose microgrids use natural gas and renewable natural gas (RNG) to drive the nation’s most dependable microgrids — all while producing significantly lower to zero carbon emissions than traditional diesel backup generators. Enchanted Rock solutions provide 24/7/365 monitoring, optimization, and forecasts to enable worry-free, reliable power for businesses. The Enchanted Rock solution brings together patented technologies, advanced dual-purpose microgrid designs and integrated end-to-end services. The Power is On and we keep it on. What you’ll do… The Principal Architect - Network & Infrastructure, is a senior enterprise IT architect responsible for defining, designing, governing, and evolving the organization’s next-generation network and infrastructure architecture across corporate, data center, and cloud environments. This role will drive the future-state architectural direction and execution of technology initiatives across IT/OT environments while ensuring operational excellence, cybersecurity resilience, and regulatory compliance in alignment with the company’s strategic objectives. In addition to defining and designing future-state architectures, this role owns the long-term health, maintainability, and evolution of enterprise network and infrastructure platforms. The Principal Architect is accountable for ensuring architectures are not only well-designed, but operationally sustainable, supportable, and continuously improved throughout their lifecycle. Reporting to the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and based at our Houston, TX headquarters, this role leads a small team of senior network and infrastructure engineers to act as a technical mentor rather than a pure people manager. This role requires deep, hands-on architectural expertise, including personally designing, validating, and evolving complex enterprise networks and infrastructure solutions. The Principal Architect - Network & Infrastructure, serves as the highest technical authority for enterprise IT and OT networking and infrastructure, partnering closely with executive leadership, cybersecurity, and IT operations teams.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Engineering, or equivalent experience.
8+ years of progressive experience in enterprise network and infrastructure engineering or architecture roles.
3+ years in a senior or Principal Architect role influencing enterprise-wide technology decisions.
Advanced certifications such as CCNP, CCIE, and/or cloud architecture certifications, or equivalent experience.
Bring experience with enterprise networking technologies, including SD-WAN, network segmentation, and IT and OT network security.
Hands-on architectural experience with enterprise virtualization platforms (e.g., VMware vSphere / ESXi, vCenter) in large-scale or mission-critical environments.
Demonstrated ability to design enterprise-scale network and infrastructure architectures.
Deep expertise in enterprise networking, data center infrastructure and operations, and cloud platforms.
Proven experience serving as the primary technical architect for major IT/OT infrastructure or network transformation initiatives.
Ability to thrive in a fast-paced, rapidly changing environment.
Must possess mobility to work in a standard office setting and to use standard office equipment, including a computer, stamina to maintain attention to detail despite interruptions, strength to lift and carry 20 pounds, vision to read printed materials and a computer screen, and hearing and speech to communicate in person and over the telephone.

Nice To Haves

Have familiarity collaborating with OT or industrial teams in organizations where IT and OT coexist.
Have experience with Industrial Control Systems including SCADA systems, PLCs and DCSs in critical infrastructure environments.
Have worked in the energy, utilities, or critical infrastructure sectors with understanding of operational requirements and regulatory landscapes around NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) and North America's bulk electric system.
Experience in strategic planning, execution, and project management.
Exceptional mentoring, communication, and interpersonal skills.
Strong organizational abilities and attention to detail.

Responsibilities

Define and maintain enterprise network and infrastructure architecture standards, reference architectures, and roadmaps.
Translate business and application requirements into scalable, resilient, and secure future-state infrastructure designs.
Lead architectural decisions across corporate networks, data centers, and cloud platforms.
Evaluate emerging technologies and vendors, making recommendations aligned to long-term enterprise IT/OT strategy.
Define architectural KPIs related to resilience, scalability, security, and cost efficiency.
Directly architect, lead and maintain enterprise LAN, WAN, and WLAN designs supporting large-scale distributed environments.
Design and maintain high-availability, fault-tolerant network architectures across geographically distributed sites.
Define routing, switching, segmentation, QoS, and traffic engineering standards.
Lead next-generation data center networking architectures.
Drive modern network initiatives including SD-WAN, SASE, cloud-integrated connectivity, and network automation-enabled designs.
Architect secure remote access and enterprise connectivity solutions.
Architect and maintain enterprise compute, storage, virtualization, and platform infrastructure.
Lead future-state architecture for hybrid and multi-cloud environments (Azure and AWS), including network integration and connectivity models.
Drive modernization of legacy infrastructure toward cloud-aligned models.
Establish standards for backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, and infrastructure resilience.
Ensure infrastructure platforms meet performance, scalability, lifecycle, and cost-efficiency objectives.
Partner with cybersecurity leadership to develop and enforce technology policies and frameworks that will ensure compliance with NERC CIP and other regulatory standards.
Support ongoing security assessments and audits by providing infrastructure and operational expertise to identify and mitigate risk.
Maintain strong security posture across IT/OT systems while ensuring operational continuity and performance.
Serve as the final architectural authority for enterprise IT and OT network and infrastructure designs.
Actively design and validate complex or high-risk solutions, providing hands-on architectural guidance to engineering teams.
Establish and enforce architecture governance, documentation standards, and design review processes.
Own and maintain enterprise architecture artifacts, including reference architectures, standards, and technical debt remediation plans.
Mentor senior engineers and other team members, elevating architectural maturity across the organization.
Build and develop a high-performing, cross-functional IT and OT team through mentorship, training, and career development.
Foster an inclusive, collaborative environment that promotes teamwork, knowledge sharing, and continuous learning.
Set clear performance objectives, conducting regular reviews, and supporting professional growth and technical excellence.
Act as a trusted technical advisor to executive leadership on infrastructure investments, tradeoffs, and architectural risk.
Collaborate with enterprise engineers, cloud teams, cybersecurity, and IT operations to deliver cohesive solutions.
Lead vendor evaluations, RFPs, and technical due diligence for network and infrastructure technologies.
Guide managed service providers and systems integrators to ensure architectural alignment.