Storage Architect / Engineer

Location: Sheffield/ Hybrid 60% office-40% Remote

Duration: 30/11/2026

Role Description

• The Storage Architect / Engineer will be responsible for designing, implementing, and optimising enterprise-grade storage, virtualisation, and data-platform solutions across hybrid environments. This role requires deep expertise in storage platforms, virtualisation, data-centre technologies, and migration strategy, with growing emphasis on cloud, automation, and container-based architectures.
• You will work closely with cross-functional infrastructure, cloud, security, and DevOps teams to deliver resilient, scalable, and high-performance storage services for mission-critical workloads.

Key Responsibilities

Storage Architecture & Engineering:

• Design, implement, and maintain enterprise storage solutions (SAN/NAS/Object) across multi-vendor ecosystems.
• Lead storage assessments, capacity planning, performance tuning, and lifecycle management.
• Develop High-Level Designs (HLDs) and Low-Level Designs (LLDs) for on-prem and hybrid storage systems.
• Deliver disaster recovery storage architecture, including replication, failover design, and runbooks (e.g., SnapMirror, SRDF, RecoverPoint, etc.).
• Design and configure SAN fabrics, zoning, multipathing, and storage connectivity.
• Architect and support VMware environments (vCenter/ESXi, HA/DRS clusters, storage policies, vSAN).
• Integrate storage solutions with VMware, Hyper-V, and container platforms.
• Participate in large-scale data-centre migrations, consolidation programmes, DR tests, and infra modernisation initiatives.
• Contribute to cloud storage designs (Azure preferred), including hybrid connectivity, virtual networks, subscriptions, and backup/replication patterns.
• Work with cloud-native storage constructs (managed disks, Azure Files/NFS, blob lifecycle policies).

Containerisation & Platform Engineering (Desirable / Growth Area):

Participate in OpenShift/Kubernetes platform design as it relates to:

• storage classes, CSI drivers
• persistent volumes and migration of stateful workloads
• cluster topology and operator-based deployments

Work alongside DevOps teams to ensure storage integration for microservices platforms.

Automation, IaC & DevOps (Emerging Priority):

• Develop automation for storage provisioning, configuration, and compliance using: Ansible, Terraform, Python or Bash scripting
• Integrate storage processes into CI/CD workflows where applicable (Jenkins, GitHub Actions, ArgoCD).

Security & Compliance:

• Ensure storage architectures meet security, audit, and operational compliance requirements.
• Contribute to network micro-segmentation and storage-centric security controls (RBAC, encryption at rest, key-management integration).

Documentation & Stakeholder Communication:

• Produce comprehensive HLDs, LLDs, operational documentation, migration runbooks, and architectural decision records.
• Provide expert guidance to engineering teams, project managers, and senior leadership.

Storage & SAN:

• Extensive experience across enterprise SAN/NAS platforms such as: NetApp (7-Mode, Clustered ONTAP), Dell EMC (VNX, VPLEX, Unity, VMAX, PowerMax), HPE 3PAR, Brocade/Cisco SAN switches (zoning, fabrics)
• Proven experience delivering complex storage migrations and DC transitions.
• Strong background in VMware vSphere/vCenter, ESXi clusters, resource scheduling, storage integration.
• Experience with VMware SRM/SRA.

Backup & DR:

• Experience with enterprise backup suites such as NetBackup, Veeam, EMC Networker, Data Domain, SnapVault/SnapMirror, etc.

Infrastructure Design:

• Demonstrated ability to produce high-quality HLD/LLD documentation.
• Experience leading large-scale migration projects (applications, workloads, storage, DC moves).
• Familiarity with Azure storage constructs, migrations, network design, and subscription planning.
• Architectural experience with OpenShift, persistent storage solutions for containers (CSI, RWX storage, stateful workload migration).

Pure Storage Expertise:

• Hands-on experience with: Pure FlashArray
• Pure FlashBlade
• Purity OS, snapshots, replication, Evergreen storage models.

Automation & IaC:

• Demonstrable experience with: Scripting languages (Python, Bash, PowerShell)
• Understanding of how storage integrates with: Jenkins
• GitHub Actions
• ArgoCD

Modern Observability & Monitoring:

• Experience with storage and infrastructure monitoring platforms (Prometheus, Grafana, DataDog, SolarWinds).

Qualifications:

• Relevant vendor certifications (NetApp NCDA/NCIE, VMware VCP, EMC/DELL, HPE).
• Kubernetes/OpenShift certifications (CKA/CKAD/Red Hat EX280) strongly preferred.

• Extensive experience across enterprise SAN/NAS platforms such as: NetApp (7-Mode, Clustered ONTAP), Dell EMC (VNX, VPLEX, Unity, VMAX, PowerMax), HPE 3PAR, Brocade/Cisco SAN switches (zoning, fabrics)
• Proven experience delivering complex storage migrations and DC transitions.
• Strong background in VMware vSphere/vCenter, ESXi clusters, resource scheduling, storage integration.
• Experience with VMware SRM/SRA.

Backup & DR:

• Experience with enterprise backup suites such as NetBackup, Veeam, EMC Networker, Data Domain, SnapVault/SnapMirror, etc.

Infrastructure Design:

• Demonstrated ability to produce high-quality HLD/LLD documentation.
• Experience leading large-scale migration projects (applications, workloads, storage, DC moves).
• Familiarity with Azure storage constructs, migrations, network design, and subscription planning.
• Architectural experience with OpenShift, persistent storage solutions for containers (CSI, RWX storage, stateful workload migration).

Pure Storage Expertise:

• Hands-on experience with: Pure FlashArray
• Pure FlashBlade
• Purity OS, snapshots, replication, Evergreen storage models.

Automation & IaC:

• Demonstrable experience with: Scripting languages (Python, Bash, PowerShell)
• Understanding of how storage integrates with: Jenkins
• GitHub Actions
• ArgoCD

Modern Observability & Monitoring:

• Experience with storage and infrastructure monitoring platforms (Prometheus, Grafana, DataDog, SolarWinds)., * Relevant vendor certifications (NetApp NCDA/NCIE, VMware VCP, EMC/DELL, HPE).
• Kubernetes/OpenShift certifications (CKA/CKAD/Red Hat EX280) strongly preferred.