Storage Architect

Principal Storage Architect - Enterprise Platforms

Location – Remote

Contract

We are seeking a senior, hands-on Principal Storage Architect. The role shapes target-state and transition architectures across a heterogeneous, multi-site estate covering file, block, object, nearline, archive, tape and cloud storage, with a strong focus on media content mobility, lifecycle management, data protection and resiliency.

The architect will drive platform modernization, standardization and consolidation of ageing platforms, define vendor-neutral, policy-driven lifecycle management, and produce executive-ready recommendations, standards and documentation that the client can own and maintain.

• Develop and maintain target-state and transition architectures for media storage, archive, media mobility, content lifecycle management and supporting infrastructure.

• Shape the long-term modernization and resiliency strategy: platform standardization, modular growth, multi-site resiliency, cloud interoperability and consolidation of ageing platforms.

• Produce logical, physical, integration, workflow and operational architecture designs.

• Design vendor-neutral, policy-driven lifecycle and HSM/tiering across nearline, object, tape and cloud tiers, replacing today’s mix of scripts, archive tools and manual processes.

• Standardize data-protection, retrieval, resiliency, RTO/RPO and service-level requirements across platforms and workloads.

• Define hybrid-cloud patterns (active-active, active-backup, tiering/bursting) based on workload, resilience, performance, accessibility and cost.

• Support roadmap development by identifying dependencies, sequencing, milestones and architectural impacts.

2.2 Automation, Observability & Operations Design

• Design storage solutions that align with the existing automation landscape: Terraform (media transport deployments), APIs, scripting, workflow automation, CI/CD pipelines and vendor-native tools.

• Define observability and monitoring architecture with Datadog as the primary platform, integrated with Splunk and other enterprise tools for logging, metrics and ing.

• Recommend improvements to observability, automation, resilience and operational consistency across vendor-native management and replication tooling.

2.3 Governance, Evaluation & Engineering Partnership

• Lead technology evaluations, product selections, proofs of concept, vendor reviews and technical due diligence.

• Participate in architecture review boards, design sessions and technical governance; review engineering designs for alignment to standards.

• Working across storage, platform, operations, cloud, network, security, application and business stakeholders.

2.4 Documentation & Knowledge Management

• Create and maintain architecture standards, design guidelines, reference architectures, reusable patterns and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs).

• Maintain architecture repositories, roadmaps and dependency documentation in client-designated repositories, in editable formats.

• Produce executive presentations, decision materials, review findings, risks, dependencies and implementation considerations.

• Deliver technical design packages and lead knowledge-transfer and handover activities.

• Provide regular status reporting covering work completed and planned, decisions needed, risks, dependencies and hours consumed.

3. Technology Environment

The candidate should be credible across a broad range of enterprise storage, media workflow, cloud, automation and observability technologies, with deep expertise in several relevant areas.

• 15+ years of enterprise architecture experience, with at least 8 years in enterprise storage and archive architecture.

• Deep expertise in file, object, block, nearline, archive and tape technologies, including HSM, tiering and lifecycle policy design.

• Proven experience with media and content-centric workflows such as broadcast, sports, post-production or digital media supply chains.

• Strong grasp of media transport and content mobility (Aspera, Signiant or similar) and MAM/DAM integration.

• Experience designing data protection, replication, DR and multi-site resiliency with defined RTO/RPO and retrieval SLAs.

• Hybrid-cloud storage architecture experience, ideally AWS S3, covering tiering, bursting and active-active models.

• A track record of creating standards, reference architectures, patterns, ADRs and governance artefacts.

• Experience leading vendor evaluations, PoCs and product selection across multiple storage OEMs.

• Excellent written and verbal communication, facilitation and stakeholder management, including executive-level presentation.

5. Desirable Skills

These skills strengthen a profile but are secondary to core storage and archive architecture depth:

• Working knowledge of Infrastructure-as-Code and automation (Terraform, Ansible, REST APIs, Python/PowerShell scripting).

• Experience designing for observability using Datadog and/or Splunk.

• Familiarity with application and software components such as CMS, databases, Kubernetes (CSI/persistent storage) and Kafka.

• Exposure to storage platform consolidation and migration programs for large unstructured media estates (petabyte scale).

• Understanding of security controls for storage: access control, encryption and immutability.

Skills

Mandatory Skills : NetApp Storage Systems