Cloud Native Senior Architect (Portworx)

Role overview

This senior customer engineering position supports the delivery and ongoing operations of cloud-native storage and data protection services for enterprise customers across the UK and EMEA region. The role embeds hands-on with customer engineering teams and certified delivery partners to design, deploy, and operate Kubernetes-based environments using Portworx Enterprise, backup, disaster recovery, and modern virtualization tooling. It is a proactive, customer-facing opportunity focused on mission-critical production infrastructure where complex troubleshooting is the norm.

Responsibilities

- Partner with delivery and solution architects on design workshops, capturing customer technical requirements and documenting the existing environment. - Design, install, configure, and maintain Kubernetes clusters and adjacent solutions using manifests, Helm charts, and infrastructure-as-code practices. - Deploy and operate container storage and data protection software across on-prem and cloud Kubernetes platforms such as OpenShift, Rancher, or VKS. - Tune integrations with underlying storage arrays, balancing performance, scale, and reliability for production workloads. - Lead day-2 operations including monitoring and alerting (Prometheus, Grafana), break/fix support, RFEs, and CI/CD pipeline integration. - Provide knowledge transfer, training, validation support, and ongoing status communication with customer stakeholders and project teams.

Requirements

- 10+ years of hands-on experience deploying and troubleshooting production Kubernetes environments and building containerised solutions. - Deep familiarity with DevOps practices and the broader cloud-native technology landscape. - Proficiency with at least one major orchestrator (OpenShift, Rancher, Mirantis) and Linux administration across RHEL, SLES, Debian, or Ubuntu. - Working knowledge of networking fundamentals (TCP/IP, DNS, load balancing), software-defined storage (NFS, Block, iSCSI), and IaaS platforms (AWS, Azure, GCP). - Experience with CI/CD tooling (Jenkins, GitOps, Argo) and configuration management or IaC frameworks (Terraform, Ansible, Chef, Puppet). - Strong communication skills, attention to detail, and comfort working directly on customer sites under pressure.

Nice to have

- Familiarity with backup, disaster recovery, and object storage management across hybrid environments. - Experience with microservices, API-based deployment, and modern virtualization patterns such as KubeVirt. - Prior professional services or consulting delivery experience with enterprise customers.

Benefits and work setup

- UK-based contract engagement with scope and duration aligned to a multi-year regional delivery roadmap. - Willingness to travel across EMEA, potentially 30% or more, including customer sites and regional offices. - Collaboration with a regional bench of architects, project managers, and a growing network of certified delivery partners.