Job Description:

Infrastructure Architect

Location: Remote (98% remote with very occasional travel to London or Manchester)
Rate: £600 per day
Duration: Contract until 30th June 2027

YOU MUST HOLD SC CLEARENCE WITH THE HOME OFFICE & HAVE NPPV3 CLEARANCE

We are looking for an experienced Infrastructure Architect to join a major organisational transformation programme focused on bringing multiple organisations, business units, and user communities together under a unified Target Operating Model (TOM).

Working as part of a multi-disciplinary transformation team, you will be responsible for defining, designing, and assuring the future-state infrastructure architecture that underpins consolidated services, platforms, and operating models. This role requires a strong blend of strategic architecture expertise, transformation experience, and stakeholder engagement skills to ensure infrastructure solutions are secure, resilient, scalable, and aligned to long-term business objectives.

Infrastructure Architecture Strategy

• Develop and maintain the infrastructure architecture strategy supporting the Target Operating Model.
• Define the future-state infrastructure landscape across cloud, hosting, networking, end-user computing, identity, storage, and platform services.
• Ensure infrastructure architecture aligns with enterprise architecture principles, business objectives, and programme outcomes.
• Provide strategic architectural guidance throughout the transformation lifecycle.

Transformation & Migration Support

• Work closely with programme teams to support the integration of multiple organisations into the target environment.
• Assess current-state infrastructure landscapes and identify opportunities for consolidation, optimisation, and standardisation.
• Support infrastructure transformation planning and migration activities.
• Ensure business continuity and operational stability throughout transition and implementation phases.

Solution Design & Assurance

• Produce high-level and detailed infrastructure designs.
• Develop infrastructure standards, architectural patterns, and reference architectures.
• Review and assure solution designs delivered by internal teams, suppliers, and technical partners.
• Ensure designs meet security, availability, resilience, performance, and operational support requirements.
• Provide architecture governance and technical assurance across the programme.

Platform & Service Alignment

• Define architectural requirements for hosting, connectivity, workplace technology, and platform services.
• Ensure infrastructure services support future operational and service management requirements.
• Align infrastructure architecture with service integration and operational readiness objectives.
• Support the successful adoption of shared platforms and infrastructure services.

Cloud & Infrastructure Modernisation

• Define cloud adoption strategies and migration approaches where appropriate.
• Identify opportunities to modernise legacy infrastructure and improve operational efficiency.
• Promote infrastructure automation, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), and cloud-native design principles.
• Support the development of scalable and future-ready infrastructure capabilities.

Security, Resilience & Compliance

• Ensure infrastructure solutions comply with security standards, policies, and regulatory requirements.
• Work closely with cyber security teams to embed secure-by-design principles.
• Support risk assessments, architecture reviews, and technical governance activities.
• Ensure solutions meet resilience, disaster recovery, backup, business continuity, and high-availability requirements.

Stakeholder Engagement

• Collaborate with business stakeholders, technical teams, service providers, and programme leadership.
• Translate complex technical concepts into clear and understandable business language.
• Facilitate design workshops, architecture reviews, and stakeholder discussions.
• Support informed decision-making through robust architectural recommendations and assessments.

Supplier & Partner Management

• Work closely with cloud providers, infrastructure suppliers, and technology partners.
• Ensure third-party solutions align with strategic architecture principles and target-state designs.
• Support technical governance across complex multi-vendor environments.
• Manage architecture dependencies associated with supplier-delivered services.

Essential Skills & Experience

• Proven experience working as an Infrastructure Architect within complex enterprise environments.
• Experience supporting large-scale business or organisational transformation programmes.
• Strong knowledge of cloud technologies, including Azure, AWS, and/or Google Cloud Platform.
• Experience developing migration strategies, transformation roadmaps, and target-state architectures.
• Experience with infrastructure consolidation, platform rationalisation, and service modernisation initiatives.
• Strong understanding of high availability, disaster recovery, resilience, backup, and business continuity principles.
• Ability to assess technical solutions against business requirements and strategic objectives.
• Strong architecture governance, documentation, and design assurance experience.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement and communication skills.
• Experience working across multiple technical disciplines, including infrastructure, networking, cloud, identity, and workplace technologies.

Hays Specialist Recruitment Limited acts as an employment agency for permanent recruitment and employment business for the supply of temporary workers. By applying for this job you accept the T&C's, Privacy Policy and Disclaimers which can be found at (url removed)