Data Center Architect

Job Summary Design and develop data center infrastructure architecture based on business, technical, availability, and scalability requirements. Design server, storage, virtualization, networking, and security infrastructure. Develop High-Level Design (HLD), Low-Level Design (LLD), architecture diagrams, and technical documentation. Design power infrastructure, including UPS, generators, ATS/STS, PDUs, and power redundancy. Design cooling and HVAC infrastructure, including airflow management, CRAC/CRAH systems, and hot/cold aisle containment. Design data center network architecture, including switching, routing, VLANs, redundancy, load balancing, and WAN/Internet connectivity. Design high-availability and fault-tolerant solutions, including N+1, 2N, and elimination of Single Points of Failure. Design backup, disaster recovery, business continuity, and failover solutions, including RPO/RTO requirements. Plan data center capacity for racks, power, cooling, compute, storage, network bandwidth, and future expansion. Design and oversee physical infrastructure, including racks, raised floors, structured cabling, fiber optics, and equipment layouts. Design data center security architecture, including firewalls, IDS/IPS, WAF, segmentation, and secure management networks. Evaluate and recommend data center technologies, hardware, software, and vendors, including preparation of technical specifications and BOMs. Lead and coordinate installation, implementation, migration, testing, and commissioning of data center infrastructure. Implement and maintain monitoring, centralized logging, environmental monitoring, and infrastructure management solutions. Provide technical leadership and continuous optimization, ensuring reliability, security, scalability, efficiency, and readiness for emerging technologies such as AI/GPU infrastructure. Job Requirements Required Qualifications Active Elite Certifications: Must hold active expert or architect-level credentials, specifically Cisco CCIE (Lab Certified) and/or Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE / Cisco Design Expert) . Education: Master degree in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related technical field. Deep Network Fabric Expertise: Expert-level mastery of software-defined networking (SDN), specifically Cisco ACI, Nexus switching lines, EVPN-VXLAN, and enterprise routing protocols (BGP, OSPF). Physical & Environmental Knowledge: Proven engineering familiarity with data center physical topologies, hot/cold aisle containment layouts, Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metrics, and N+1/2N critical power (UPS/Generator) designs. Industry Framework Compliance: Thorough understanding of global facility and security standards, including Uptime Institute Tier Standards , TIA-942, SOC 2, and ISO 27001. Experience Requirement: 10+ years of relevant experience in data center network architecture, physical infrastructure design, or enterprise facility planning. Hands-on experience with Cisco Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI), Nexus switching fabrics, and EVPN-VXLAN technologies. Practical experience identifying, assessing, and supporting remediation of infrastructure capacity limitations, power bottlenecks, or single points of failure. Experience using tools such as Cisco Nexus Dashboard Fabric Controller (NDFC), Ansible, Python scripting, or similar infrastructure automation tools. Experience with Uptime Institute Tier Standards, TIA-942 guidelines, hot/cold aisle containment, and structural power distribution. Experience working with mechanical/electrical/plumbing (MEP) engineers to verify, prioritize, and design critical power and cooling systems. Active expert-level credential such as Cisco CCIE (Lab Certified) or Cisco Certified Design Expert (CCDE) is an advantage. Familiarity with secure zero-trust network micro-segmentation, biometric access systems, and physical facility regulatory compliance before deployment is preferred. Experience designing high-availability and fault-tolerant infrastructure, including N+1 and 2N architectures. Experience with backup, disaster recovery, replication, business continuity, RPO/RTO, and failover solutions. Experience preparing HLD, LLD, network diagrams, rack layouts, BOMs, technical specifications, and architecture documentation.