VE3
Lead Storage & Data Architect
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Job Title: Lead Storage Data Architect
Experience: 5+ years
Location: Maidenhead, United Kingdom
Job Type: Contract/Freelance
Role Purpose
Lead the technical design of the future storage and data-management platform for file/HPC and block, and for the data-management layer. Own the current-state assessment, data profiling, options appraisal, and target architecture for these areas, producing vendor-neutral, procurement-ready artefacts that stand up to competitive procurement and support a safe, phased migration.
Requirements
Key Responsibilities
- Lead the current-state assessment of the file/HPC (PowerScale/Isilon) and block (PowerMax) estate – architecture, capacity, utilisation, performance, resilience, and lifecycle.
- Profile unstructured and research data (volumes, file counts, age/heat) and produce data maps identifying tiering and archive candidates.
- Design the data-management and orchestration layer – cataloguing, tagging, policy-driven tiering, lifecycle, and long-term retention aligned to funding-agency and compliance obligations.
- Ensure a fast on-premises tier for HPC where cloud latency and bandwidth are unsuitable, within an overall tiered architecture.
- Produce vendor-neutral options appraisals weighing performance, capacity, archive, and cloud on a whole-life CapEx/OPEX basis.
- Develop high- and low-level designs (HLD/LLD) for the target storage architecture (design phase).
- Define storage and data-management requirements; contribute to the requirements and risk registers; facilitate technical workshops with client teams and the (virtual) storage SME.
- Contribute to the costed design-phase estimate and roadmap for the Discovery gate, and ensure designs are secure-by-design and migration-ready.
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Deliverables Owned
- Current-state assessment for WS1, WS2, and WS4; data maps.
- Storage and data-management content of the Requirements Register and Risk Register.
- Options appraisal and target architecture (HLD/LLD) – design phase.
- Input to the Discovery Report and the design-phase estimate & plan.
Essential Skills & Experience
- Substantial experience designing enterprise storage at multi-petabyte scale, across both file and block.
- Deep, hands-on expertise with Dell PowerScale/Isilon and Dell PowerMax (or directly comparable scale-out NAS and enterprise block platforms).
- HPC / research-computing storage: parallel or scale-out file systems and high-throughput, low-latency workloads.
- Proven data-management design – cataloguing, tagging, policy tiering, lifecycle/retention, and archive (object, tape/cold).
- Vendor-neutral architecture and options appraisal, with strong HLD/LLD documentation.
- Capacity and performance analysis from storage telemetry; whole-life cost modelling (CapEx vs OPEX).
- Hybrid-cloud storage awareness (e.g. object storage, Azure NetApp Files) and where cloud does and does not fit.
- Confident stakeholder engagement, workshop facilitation, and clear technical writing.
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Desirable
- Higher-education or research-intensive environments; long-term funding-agency data-retention obligations.
- Producing vendor-neutral designs that feed competitive procurements.
- Data governance / classification frameworks; tape cold-storage archive projects.
- Certifications (desirable)
- Dell Technologies storage certifications (PowerScale/Isilon, PowerMax / PowerStore).
- Architecture framework such as TOGAF; Microsoft Azure fundamentals/associate.
Behaviour
- Evidence-led and consultative; comfortable challenging and being challenged (e.g. cloud-vs-on-prem for HPC) while staying vendor-neutral.
- Strong on-site collaborator who communicates clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders.
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