VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF 9) Architect / Engineer

Thin Technologies

  • 30+ days ago

    Highlights

    The successful candidate will be technically strong, self-directed, professional, comfortable working with enterprise customers, and willing to take ownership of complex infrastructure projects from discovery through design, implementation, migration, and operational handoff . We are looking for someone who can walk into a customer environment, understand the existing infrastructure, lead the technical conversation, design the future-state VCF architecture, document it professionally, present it confidently, and then participate directly in implementing the solution.

    Numbers & Facts

    Location

    Description

    Position Overview

    We are seeking an experienced VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF 9) Architect / Engineer to design, deploy, migrate, and optimize enterprise VMware Cloud Foundation environments for customers across the United States.

    This is a highly technical, customer-facing role requiring a combination of architecture expertise, hands-on engineering capability, strong communication and presentation skills, and a willingness to travel. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable developing a VCF architecture, working directly with infrastructure teams during implementation, troubleshooting complex issues, and presenting designs and recommendations to technical and executive stakeholders.

    The position will support enterprise and large-scale infrastructure modernization initiatives and may involve extended customer engagements from initial discovery and design through deployment, migration, documentation, and operational transition.

    Key Responsibilities

    VCF Architecture & Design

    Architect enterprise solutions based on VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x.
    Develop High-Level Designs (HLDs) and Low-Level Designs (LLDs) for VCF environments.
    Design VCF management domains, workload domains, clusters, and supporting infrastructure.
    Design and implement VCF Fleet and VCF Instance architectures appropriate for customer availability and operational requirements.
    Develop compute, storage, networking, security, availability, and management architectures.
    Define infrastructure sizing, capacity, availability, resiliency, and scalability requirements.
    Develop multi-datacenter and disaster recovery architectures.
    Evaluate existing VMware environments and develop modernization and migration strategies.
    Translate business, application, security, and operational requirements into technical architecture.

    VCF Engineering & Implementation

    Perform hands-on installation, configuration, and deployment of VCF 9 environments.
    Deploy and configure core VCF components, including:
    VMware ESX
    VMware vCenter
    VCF Operations
    VCF Automation
    VCF Identity Broker
    NSX
    SDDC Manager and associated VCF lifecycle services
    Configure VCF management and workload domains.
    Configure VLAN-backed and NSX-based networking architectures as required.
    Integrate VCF with enterprise DNS, NTP, Active Directory, identity, certificate, monitoring, backup, and security services.
    Configure and validate lifecycle management and upgrade processes.
    Troubleshoot complex VMware infrastructure issues across compute, storage, networking, and management components.
    Assist customers with operationalizing newly deployed VCF environments.

    Migration & Modernization

    Assess existing VMware environments and develop migration plans into VCF 9.
    Develop migration waves, dependency requirements, sequencing, rollback procedures, and validation plans.
    Support migrations between existing vSphere environments and new VCF workload domains.
    Assist with datacenter consolidation, infrastructure refresh, and platform modernization projects.
    Identify technical risks and dependencies that could impact migrations.
    Develop cutover and migration runbooks.
    Participate in production migration and cutover activities when required.

    Storage & Networking

    Candidates should have strong knowledge of enterprise storage and networking concepts, including:

    Fibre Channel and NVMe/FC
    NVMe/TCP
    NFS and block storage
    SAN fabrics
    Enterprise storage arrays
    VMware multipathing and storage best practices
    VMware Distributed Switches
    VLAN-based networking
    NSX networking concepts
    Physical and virtual network integration
    10/25/40/100Gb Ethernet environments

    Experience integrating VMware environments with platforms from vendors such as Pure Storage, NetApp, Dell, Cisco, Arista, or similar enterprise infrastructure vendors is highly desirable.

    Customer-Facing & Presentation Responsibilities

    This is not solely a back-end engineering position. The architect will regularly interact directly with customers and must be able to clearly communicate complex technical concepts.

    Responsibilities include:

    Lead technical discovery and architecture workshops.
    Facilitate whiteboarding and solution-design sessions.
    Present architecture and design recommendations to customers.
    Present effectively to engineers, infrastructure leadership, architects, and executives.
    Explain technical tradeoffs and recommendations in business terms.
    Lead design reviews and obtain stakeholder agreement on architectural decisions.
    Develop professional PowerPoint presentations and technical documentation.
    Communicate project status, risks, dependencies, and technical issues clearly.
    Represent the consulting organization professionally while working onsite with customers.

    Candidates should be comfortable presenting to a room, leading technical conversations, and defending architectural recommendations when challenged.

    Documentation Responsibilities

    Develop professional customer-facing deliverables including:

    High-Level Design documents
    Low-Level Design documents
    Current-state assessments
    Architecture diagrams
    Logical and physical infrastructure diagrams
    Network and storage connectivity diagrams
    Firewall and communication matrices
    Migration plans
    Implementation runbooks
    Operational procedures
    Configuration standards
    As-built documentation
    Executive and technical presentations

    Experience with Microsoft Visio, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and similar documentation tools is expected.

    Required Technical Experience

    Candidates should have significant experience with several of the following:

    VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x
    VMware vSphere / ESX
    VMware vCenter
    VCF Operations
    VCF Automation
    NSX
    SDDC Manager
    VCF lifecycle management
    Enterprise server platforms
    Enterprise SAN and storage platforms
    Fibre Channel and/or NVMe storage technologies
    Enterprise Ethernet networking
    Active Directory and enterprise identity integration
    PKI and certificate management
    Backup and disaster recovery technologies
    Multi-site infrastructure architectures
    Datacenter migrations
    Infrastructure automation

    Preferred Qualifications

    7+ years of VMware infrastructure experience
    3+ years of VMware Cloud Foundation experience
    Experience with VCF 5.x and/or VCF 9.x
    VMware VCP, VCAP, VCDX, or equivalent experience
    Experience designing large enterprise VMware environments
    Experience performing customer-facing consulting engagements
    Experience leading infrastructure design workshops
    Experience producing formal HLD and LLD documentation
    Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills
    Strong written and verbal communication skills
    Strong presentation and whiteboarding skills
    Experience working with healthcare, financial services, utilities, government, or other highly regulated enterprise environments is a plus.

    Travel Requirements

    This position requires a willingness and ability to travel to customer locations throughout the United States.

    Travel may include:

    5–7 consecutive days onsite for deployment, migration, workshops, or project milestones.
    Multiple onsite engagements throughout the year.
    Air travel and overnight stays.
    Occasional evening or weekend work associated with production migrations and cutovers.

    When not required onsite, work may be performed remotely depending on project requirements.

    Ideal Candidate

    The ideal candidate is an architect who can engineer and an engineer who can architect.

    We are looking for someone who can walk into a customer environment, understand the existing infrastructure, lead the technical conversation, design the future-state VCF architecture, document it professionally, present it confidently, and then participate directly in implementing the solution.

    The successful candidate will be technically strong, self-directed, professional, comfortable working with enterprise customers, and willing to take ownership of complex infrastructure projects from discovery through design, implementation, migration, and operational handoff.

    Similar Jobs