Expert Architect

Private Destinations•Fort Lauderdale, FL

5d•Hybrid

About The Position

The Principal Enterprise Architect, Infrastructure Virtualized Solutions serves as the organization’s highest-level technical authority and a globally recognized external thought leader in enterprise virtualization, hybrid infrastructure, resilient computing, storage, workload mobility, disaster recovery, and infrastructure automation. The role defines and governs the global infrastructure architecture strategy supporting complex shoreside and fleet operations. It establishes the long-term architecture vision, enterprise principles, reference models, technology standards, and investment direction for platforms that enable mission-critical operational, guest-facing, and corporate services. Operating with enterprise-wide authority and substantial independence, the role proactively identifies and solves the organization’s most complex and unprecedented infrastructure challenges. It develops innovative solutions from first principles when established practices, technologies, or precedents are insufficient. Decisions made by the role materially influence business continuity, cybersecurity posture, global scalability, capital investment, technology risk, operational performance, and the strategic direction of the business. The role leads the organization’s largest, most strategically significant, and technically complex multidisciplinary infrastructure transformation initiatives. These initiatives span fleet and shoreside environments, data centers, cloud platforms, cybersecurity, application ecosystems, engineering, and business operations. The role participates directly in the development of business and technology strategy and advises executive leadership on emerging technologies, strategic risk, enterprise investment, operational resilience, and the infrastructure capabilities required to support long-term growth and innovation. Through external professional leadership, strategic technology partnerships, and engagement with major vendors and industry bodies, the role influences industry practices and technology roadmaps. It originates major architectural innovations expected to advance the infrastructure architecture profession and establish the organization as a leader in secure, resilient, and globally distributed technology environments.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a closely related discipline.
Minimum of 15 years of progressively responsible experience in enterprise infrastructure architecture and engineering.
Extensive experience serving as a principal, chief, or enterprise architectural authority for complex, globally distributed, business-critical environments.
Demonstrated experience defining and governing infrastructure architecture across international or global operations.
Demonstrated record of originating and implementing major infrastructure innovations with impact beyond a single team, platform, business unit, or technology domain.
Demonstrated experience leading the largest multidisciplinary technology transformations across complex international or global operations.
Proven experience influencing executive business strategy, major investment decisions, strategic vendor direction, and long-range technology roadmaps.
Experience supporting highly available, mission-critical operational and customer-facing environments.
Experience developing original solutions for problems where established practices, technologies, or precedents are insufficient.
Experience influencing technology practices across multiple functions, geographic locations, vendors, and operating environments
VMware vSphere, NSX, vSAN
Hyper-V
Nutanix AHV
Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops
Kubernetes and OpenShift
Dell EMC
Pure Storage
NetApp
HPE Storage Platforms
Cisco
Arista
Palo Alto
SD-WAN technologies
Azure
AWS
Hybrid cloud architecture
Windows Server
Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Ubuntu Linux
Terraform
Ansible
PowerShell
Python
GitOps methodologies
Global and enterprise strategic thinking
External thought leadership
Executive-level communication and influence
Enterprise architecture governance
Leadership of multidisciplinary global initiatives
Influencing without formal authority
Strategic stakeholder management
Senior technical mentorship
Decision-making under significant complexity and ambiguity
Business and financial acumen
Enterprise risk assessment
Strategic vendor influence
Innovation leadership
Ability to originate solutions from first principles
Ability to translate business strategy into technology capability
Ability to establish alignment across diverse executive, technical, operational, and external stakeholders

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Business, or a related discipline.
Advanced professional architecture, cloud, infrastructure, cybersecurity, or technology leadership certifications.

Responsibilities

Define and govern the global infrastructure architecture strategy across virtualized compute, storage, networking, private and public cloud, workload mobility, disaster recovery, automation, and platform engineering.
Establish the long-term architecture vision, enterprise principles, reference models, technology standards, decision frameworks, and investment roadmaps supporting global shoreside and fleet operations.
Exercise final enterprise architectural authority for the organization’s most complex, highest-risk, and most strategically significant infrastructure solutions and transformation initiatives.
Lead enterprise architecture review boards, resolve architectural conflicts across functions and platforms, and approve exceptions to enterprise standards based on business value, strategic risk, and long-term architectural integrity.
Establish architecture health metrics and executive-level reporting that identify enterprise risk, technical debt, modernization opportunities, and strategic investment requirements.
Participate directly in the formulation of enterprise business and technology strategy, translating long-range business objectives into global infrastructure capabilities, architecture roadmaps, and investment priorities.
Advise executive leadership on how emerging technologies and infrastructure capabilities can enable business growth, fleet expansion, guest experience innovation, operational resilience, and enterprise risk reduction.
Identify and sponsor opportunities where infrastructure innovation can create new business capabilities or materially improve the organization’s global operating model.
Shape and materially influence enterprise infrastructure investment strategy, including major capital expenditures, operating expenditures, sourcing decisions, and long-range financial plans.
Evaluate the business, financial, operational, cybersecurity, regulatory, and technology implications of major infrastructure investments and present executive-level recommendations.
Serve as a globally recognized authority and external thought leader in enterprise virtualization, hybrid infrastructure, resilient computing, cloud architecture, infrastructure automation, and related technologies.
Originate innovative architectural approaches, reference models, and technology strategies that materially advance enterprise capabilities and address challenges for which accepted industry practices or existing solutions are insufficient.
Develop solutions from first principles for the organization’s most complex and unprecedented infrastructure and business challenges.
Represent the organization in strategic vendor councils, industry bodies, professional forums, and executive technology communities.
Influence industry practices and the strategic roadmaps of major technology providers based on the organization’s complex global business, fleet, and operating requirements.
Lead the organization’s largest, most strategically significant, and technically complex multidisciplinary infrastructure transformation initiatives.
Direct programs spanning global shoreside and fleet operations, data centers, cloud platforms, cybersecurity, application ecosystems, network services, engineering, and business operations.
Establish architecture direction, decision rights, risk parameters, success measures, and technical priorities for global infrastructure transformation programs.
Maintain enterprise accountability for architectural outcomes that materially affect global business continuity, operational resilience, cybersecurity posture, guest-facing services, technology risk, and long-term investment.
Provide enterprise-wide technical leadership, establish direction for senior architects and engineers, and align executive stakeholders, technology leaders, vendors, and external partners around a unified architecture strategy.
Anticipate emerging business and technology requirements and initiate transformation strategies before existing platforms or practices constrain organizational performance, innovation, or growth.
Define and govern the global architecture for enterprise virtualization, compute, server, storage, converged and hyper-converged platforms, hybrid cloud, multi-cloud, and globally distributed infrastructure environments.
Establish enterprise standards for workload placement, cloud adoption, connectivity, portability, platform lifecycle management, performance, capacity, high availability, disaster recovery, and workload mobility across shoreside and fleet environments.
Determine strategic platform direction based on business criticality, performance, scalability, reliability, cybersecurity, regulatory requirements, resilience, lifecycle considerations, and total cost.
Define the architectural control framework required to meet Zero Trust, identity, network segmentation, secure virtualization, platform-hardening, audit, data-protection, and business-continuity obligations.
Exercise architectural authority over infrastructure-related security and resilience decisions with material enterprise impact and ensure the continuity and recovery of mission-critical guest-facing, operational, and corporate services.
Anticipate emerging cyber, regulatory, operational, and technology risks and determine the required enterprise architecture response.
Establish the enterprise automation, infrastructure-as-code, self-service, configuration-management, orchestration, and platform-engineering strategy.
Define architectural standards for Terraform, Ansible, PowerShell, Python, GitOps, policy-driven automation, and related technologies.
Originate reusable enterprise platforms and architecture patterns that reduce operational complexity, improve reliability, strengthen security, accelerate delivery, and support global shoreside and fleet environments.
Direct the technical evaluation of strategic vendors, platforms, partnerships, and sourcing decisions, balancing business value, architectural integrity, operational resilience, financial impact, and long-term technology risk.
Influence vendor product strategies and technology roadmaps and establish the technical requirements governing strategic enterprise technology partnerships.
Serve as a trusted advisor to executive leadership, mentor senior technical professionals, and develop enterprise architecture capability across multiple infrastructure disciplines.