Mission freelance Technical Infrastructure & Network Architect

Provide technical architecture leadership across infrastructure, network, cloud and hybrid environments, supporting transformation, modernization and operational initiatives across multiple projects and sites, including industrial and OT environments.

The role involves defining coherent, secure, resilient and operable technical architectures and supporting their delivery from design through implementation and transition to operations.

The architect must understand the broader architecture context, including applications, data flows, trust zones, integration mechanisms, cloud connectivity, security and operational constraints, rather than focusing solely on individual infrastructure components.

The Technical Infrastructure & Network Architect works closely with Enterprise, Solution, Application, Data, Cloud and Security Architects, as well as Infrastructure, Network, DevOps and project teams.

The role is responsible for the technical infrastructure architecture required to host, connect, secure, operate and recover solutions, including network, compute, storage, backup, cloud/hybrid infrastructure, container foundations and observability.

End-to-end architecture is developed collaboratively. The architect actively contributes to cross-domain architecture decisions and challenges proposed solutions where necessary.

Network and infrastructure architecture are treated as integral parts of the overall solution architecture, rather than isolated technical domains.

• Translate business, application and solution requirements into technical architecture requirements covering hosting, connectivity, performance, availability, security, resilience, backup/recovery, monitoring and supportability.

• Define target and reference architectures, reusable standards and technical patterns across multiple sites.

• Produce High-Level Designs (HLDs), architecture documentation and diagrams, and review Low-Level Designs (LLDs) and detailed technical designs.

• Analyse impacts, dependencies, risks, architecture gaps, single points of failure and operational constraints.

• Challenge solutions proposed by projects, suppliers and engineering teams, assessing alternative options.

• Document key architecture decisions through Architecture Decision Records (ADRs).

• Assess deviations from architecture and technical standards and support governance and approval processes.

• Define Build-to-Run requirements and support production readiness, operational handover and knowledge transfer.

The architect must be comfortable with structured architecture practices, including:

• ArchiMate

• TOGAF or an equivalent architecture methodology

• Architecture principles and standards

• Architecture Decision Records (ADRs)

• Target-state architecture

• Impact and dependency analysis

• Architecture governance

The ability to produce clear, concise and actionable HLDs, architecture diagrams, technical requirements and decision records is essential.

Strong expertise in:

• LAN/WAN, routing, switching, VLANs and subnets

• Network segmentation, firewalls, DMZs and security zoning

• Wi-Fi and site/datacenter connectivity

• Compute and virtualization

• Windows/Linux infrastructure foundations

• Storage, backup and recovery

• High availability and disaster recovery

• Hybrid infrastructure and resilience

Good working knowledge of cloud architecture and networking, particularly AWS, including:

• VPCs, subnets and route tables

• Internet and NAT Gateways

• Transit Gateway and VPC Peering

• PrivateLink

• Security Groups and Network ACLs

• Route 53

• Direct Connect

The architect must understand cloud landing zone constraints and analyse connectivity, routing, segmentation and security implications between on-premises and cloud environments.

Sufficient understanding of modern integration patterns to assess their infrastructure, network and security implications, including:

• REST APIs and OpenAPI

• OAuth2, OIDC and JWT

• Mutual TLS (mTLS)

• API Gateways and reverse proxies

• API security and rate limiting

• Webhooks

• Event-driven architecture

• Kafka and messaging

• AMQP, SFTP and HTTPS

The architect is not expected to replace an Application or Integration Architect but must understand how systems communicate and challenge connectivity requests in their broader architecture context.

The expected approach goes beyond identifying which network flow must be opened. It involves understanding why the interaction exists, which systems and data are involved, the trust zones concerned, the integration mechanism used and the target architecture.

• Target and reference architectures

• HLDs and architecture diagrams

• Architecture Decision Records

• Technical requirements and design reviews

• Architecture risk and dependency assessments

• Standards exception records

• Architecture inputs to production readiness and operational handover