Location: Remote (London 1-2 days per month)
Urgent
We are seeking a senior technical leader to oversee the architectural direction and delivery of a complex Telco cloud transformation. The Lead Architect will define and safeguard the overall technical architecture, ensuring the migration from VMware technologies to Red Hat and Wind River platforms is executed cohesively, securely, and in accordance with regulatory and vendor standards. This position holds responsibility for the integrity of the solution, the technical governance framework, risk management, and the alignment of all workstreams contributing to the programme.
The individual will act as the authoritative voice on platform design, quality, operational readiness, and strategic decision-making. Extensive Telco architecture experience and strong stakeholder management capabilities are essential.
Own the end-to-end architecture, ensuring it remains aligned to the programme’s scope and boundaries.
Lead Architecture Review Boards and provide clear direction on risks, decisions, and technical challenges.
Establish and enforce technical governance, working closely with project managers, account leadership, vendors, and customer engineering teams.
Identify, track, and mitigate technical risks across the solution; Manage critical workstream interdependencies across compute, storage, virtualisation, and network fabric layers.
Oversee the deployment of infrastructure supporting the migration of applications to Red Hat OpenShift and Wind River IaaS environments.
Align all solutions with the customer’s automation framework, promoting zero-touch provisioning and repeatable deployments.
Background in the telecoms sector with a solid understanding of regulatory and TSA-related expectations.
Experience with bare-metal builds, automation frameworks, and ZTP deployment methodologies.
Understanding of physical installation requirements for Telco-grade infrastructure.
Working knowledge of networking technologies such as Calico, MetalLB, and service mesh solutions like Istio.
Strong communication skills, with the ability to convey complex technical subjects to both engineers and non-technical leaders.
Awareness of Arista or Cisco network environments and how Kubernetes clusters integrate with the underlying fabric.
Foundational knowledge of CI/CD tooling such as GitLab and core DevOps practices, particularly when coordinating with automation architects.
Above all, exceptional stakeholder management skills and the ability to represent the architectural function alongside programme leadership within a Telco delivery environment.
