What are the responsibilities and job description for the Cloud Architect position at Lightedge?
Lightedge, as one of the few VMware VCSP partners in the USA, is seeking a talented Cloud Architect. This role is critical for designing, implementing, and operationalizing primarily VMware-based cloud and private infrastructure platforms supporting Lightedge’s enterprise and customer workloads. Key focus will be driving Architectural alignment with infrastructure best practices, security standards, and operational requirements across compute, networking, storage, and virtualization layers.
The ideal candidate brings deep expertise in VMware technologies (VCF suite, vSphere, Aria, vCD, vSAN, NSX), enterprise storage systems, and data protection platforms, paired with strong architectural thinking and the ability to design and support highly available, mission-critical environments at scale. A willingness to learn and implement new technologies is critical.
\n- VMware Cloud Architecture:
- Design, architect, and develop standards and maintenance guidelines for VMware-based cloud and private infrastructure environments, following industry and vendor best practices for HA/DRS configurations, lifecycle management, and performance optimization.
- Storage Architecture:
- Design and integrate enterprise storage solutions (e.g., Pure Storage, NetApp, or equivalent) to support performance, resiliency, and scalability requirements. Ensure best practices around multipathing, snapshots, replication, and tiering.
- vSAN & Software-Defined Storage:
- Architect, deploy, and optimize VMware vSAN environments, including capacity planning, fault domains, performance tuning, and operational support.
- Networking & Integration:
- Collaborate with networking teams to design and integrate VMware networking (NSX & VLAN-backed environments) and ensure secure, high-performance connectivity to storage, backup, and cloud-adjacent services.
- Backup, Recovery & Cyber Resilience:
- Ensure platforms are designed for data protection, cyber resilience, and rapid recovery. Experience with enterprise backup platforms (Veeam, Commvault), immutable storage, and recovery strategies is strongly preferred.
- Operational Support:
- Serve as a top-tier escalation resource for implemented architectures, recognizing that all Operations personnel share responsibility for delivering a reliable and high-quality client experience.
- Automation & Lifecycle Management:
- Ensure automation and standardization are embedded in platform designs to support repeatable, consistent deployments and upgrades.
- Documentation & Standards:
- Maintain architecture diagrams, system documentation, and operational standards to support governance, audits, and knowledge sharing across teams.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration:
- Work closely with infrastructure, storage, networking, security, automation, and operations teams to ensure solutions are secure, scalable, and supportable.
- Sales & Customer Support:
- Act as a VMware and storage subject-matter expert during customer engagements, assisting Sales with solution design, architecture validation, and technical discovery when needed.
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or equivalent practical experience
- 10 years of hands-on experience designing and supporting VMware-based infrastructure
- Strong expertise with VMware vSphere, vCenter, HA/DRS, and cluster design
- Proven experience architecting enterprise storage systems and/or VMware vSAN
- Experience integrating virtualization platforms with backup, DR, and cyber recovery solutions
- Familiarity with NSX, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and high-availability storage networking
- Strong troubleshooting, documentation, and communication skills
- VMware certifications (VCP, VCAP, or equivalent) preferred