Job Title

IT Infrastructure Architect

Education

Bachelor's Degree

Location

Houston, TX 77032 US (Primary)

Career Level

Professional

Category

Information Technology

Job Type

Permanent

Job Description

POSITION SUMMARY

We are seeking a seasoned Infrastructure Architect to design and drive the technical direction of our technology platform. This is a senior individual contributor role focused on hands-on architecture across cloud, on-premises, DevOps/platform, and security domains. You will own high-impact technical decisions, set standards and patterns for the broader engineering organization, and serve as the go-to expert for infrastructure strategy. The ideal candidate combines deep multi-cloud expertise, a pragmatic approach to hybrid environments, and the communication skills to translate complex infrastructure concepts into business value.

Note on Scope: This is an IT Infrastructure role, not an Enterprise Architecture (EA) position. The Infrastructure Architect operates at the implementation and delivery layer - designing, building, and operating infrastructure systems. The role works in close partnership with the EA team to ensure infrastructure decisions align with enterprise-wide architectural standards, roadmaps, and governance. Candidates should expect regular collaboration with EA but will not be responsible for enterprise-level application or business architecture.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

Architecture & Design

• Define and own the enterprise infrastructure reference architecture spanning cloud (AWS, Azure, GCP), on-premises data centers, and hybrid connectivity.
• Lead the evaluation, selection, and lifecycle management of infrastructure platforms, tools, and vendors.
• Design scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant systems that meet SLA and RTO/RPO targets.
• Establish Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) standards using Terraform, Pulumi, or equivalent; champion GitOps practices.
• Drive cloud migration and modernization roadmaps, including workload assessment, re-platforming, and cost optimization.
• Architect network topologies including VPCs, VPNs, SD-WAN, DNS, load balancing, and CDN strategies.
• Produce architecture decision records (ADRs), design documentation, and reference implementations that the broader team can follow.

Cloud & On-Premises Operations

• Provide architectural oversight of production cloud environments (AWS, Azure, and/or GCP) for reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.
• Guide on-premises and colocation infrastructure strategy: compute (VMware/bare metal), storage, and networking.
• Define capacity planning, disaster recovery, and business continuity strategies.
• Serve as escalation owner for P1/P2 infrastructure incidents; participate in on-call rotation.
• Design and evolve the observability stack (metrics, logs, traces) using Datadog, Prometheus/Grafana, Splunk, or equivalent.

DevOps & Platform Engineering

• Design and improve CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins) to enable rapid, reliable software delivery.
• Architect Kubernetes platform strategy (EKS, AKS, GKE, or self-managed): cluster topology, workload placement, autoscaling, and resource policies.
• Define developer experience standards by designing self-service platform capabilities, internal developer portals, and golden paths.
• Promote SRE practices: SLOs, error budgets, chaos engineering, and blameless post-mortems.

Security & Compliance

• Embed security into infrastructure from the ground up: zero-trust networking, IAM least-privilege, secrets management, and encryption at rest/in transit.
• Partner with the security team to achieve and maintain compliance certifications (SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, PCI-DSS, HIPAA) as applicable.
• Define vulnerability management, patching cadence, and infrastructure hardening standards.
• Design infrastructure-level controls for regulatory requirements and audit readiness.

Technical Leadership & Collaboration

• Act as a technical advisor and subject matter expert; provide architecture reviews and guidance to engineering teams.
• Collaborate cross-functionally with Engineering, Product, Security, and Finance stakeholders to align infrastructure strategy with business goals.
• Partner with the Enterprise Architecture (EA) team to ensure infrastructure designs, standards, and roadmaps align with enterprise architectural principles and governance - this role supports and implements EA direction but does not own enterprise-level architecture.
• Translate EA standards and reference architectures into concrete, executable infrastructure designs and patterns.
• Mentor engineers informally through design reviews, pair work, and documentation - without direct reporting responsibility.
• Evaluate and manage vendor and technology partnerships, and contribute to infrastructure budget planning and optimization.

Exemption Type

Exempt (Salaried)

Job Requirements

QUALIFICATIONS

Required

• 8+ years of progressive infrastructure engineering experience, with a track record of driving architecture decisions at scale.
• Hands-on expertise with at least two major cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP); cloud certifications (e.g., AWS Solutions Architect Professional, Azure Expert) preferred.
• Deep knowledge of networking fundamentals: routing, switching, BGP, firewalls, TLS/PKI.
• Proficiency with IaC tools (Terraform, Ansible, or CloudFormation) and source control workflows.
• Experience architecting and operating container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes) in production at scale.
• Strong written and verbal communication skills; ability to produce clear architecture documentation and present to senior stakeholders.
• Demonstrated ability to design for high availability, security, and compliance in regulated or enterprise environments.

Preferred

• Experience with hybrid/multi-cloud connectivity (AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, SD-WAN).
• Familiarity with FinOps practices and cloud cost governance tooling (AWS Cost Explorer, CloudHealth, Apptio).
• Scripting and automation skills in Python, Go, or Bash.
• Experience with service mesh technologies (Istio, Linkerd) and API gateway platforms.
• Prior involvement in SOC 2, PCI-DSS, or HIPAA audit processes.
• CISSP, CISM, AWS/Azure/GCP Professional certification, or equivalent.

Please note: There is no relocation or immigration assistance associated with this opening.

Compensation based on experience. We offer a very competitive salary, full benefits, matching 401(k), tuition reimbursement, and casual dress environment.