Position: Storage Architect
Job Location: Remote with Occasional Travel
Duration: Contract
Important Note:
The candidate has no experience in media related things and it's similar to other profiles .There's no evidence of media or broadcast workflows, media transport (Aspera or Signiant), MAM/DAM integration, or tape, HSM and nearline archive design.
JOB DESCRIPTION
Role Title
Principal Architect / Lead Solutions Architect – Enterprise Media Storage
1. Role Summary
We are seeking a senior, hands-on Principal Storage Architect. The role shapes target-state and transition architectures across a heterogeneous, multi-site estate covering file, block, object, nearline, archive, tape and cloud storage, with a strong focus on media content mobility, lifecycle management, data protection and resiliency.
The architect will drive platform modernization, standardization and consolidation of ageing platforms, define vendor-neutral, policy-driven lifecycle management, and produce executive-ready recommendations, standards and documentation that the client can own and maintain.
2. Key Responsibilities
2.1 Architecture & Strategy
Develop and maintain target-state and transition architectures for media storage, archive, media mobility, content lifecycle management and supporting infrastructure.
Shape the long-term modernization and resiliency strategy: platform standardization, modular growth, multi-site resiliency, cloud interoperability and consolidation of ageing platforms.
Produce logical, physical, integration, workflow and operational architecture designs.
Design vendor-neutral, policy-driven lifecycle and HSM/tiering across nearline, object, tape and cloud tiers, replacing today’s mix of scripts, archive tools and manual processes.
Standardize data-protection, retrieval, resiliency, RTO/RPO and service-level requirements across platforms and workloads.
Define hybrid-cloud patterns (active-active, active-backup, tiering/bursting) based on workload, resilience, performance, accessibility and cost.
Support roadmap development by identifying dependencies, sequencing, milestones and architectural impacts.
2.2 Automation, Observability & Operations Design
Design storage solutions that align with the existing automation landscape: Terraform (media transport deployments), APIs, scripting, workflow automation, CI/CD pipelines and vendor-native tools.
Define observability and monitoring architecture with Datadog as the primary platform, integrated with Splunk and other enterprise tools for logging, metrics and ing.
Recommend improvements to observability, automation, resilience and operational consistency across vendor-native management and replication tooling.
2.3 Governance, Evaluation & Engineering Partnership
Lead technology evaluations, product selections, proofs of concept, vendor reviews and technical due diligence.
Participate in architecture review boards, design sessions and technical governance; review engineering designs for alignment to standards.
Working across storage, platform, operations, cloud, network, security, application and business stakeholders.
2.4 Documentation & Knowledge Management
Create and maintain architecture standards, design guidelines, reference architectures, reusable patterns and Architecture Decision Records (ADRs).
Maintain architecture repositories, roadmaps and dependency documentation in client-designated repositories, in editable formats.
Produce executive presentations, decision materials, review findings, risks, dependencies and implementation considerations.
Deliver technical design packages and lead knowledge-transfer and handover activities.
Provide regular status reporting covering work completed and planned, decisions needed, risks, dependencies and hours consumed.
3. Technology Environment The candidate should be credible across a broad range of enterprise storage, media workflow, cloud, automation and observability technologies, with deep expertise in several relevant areas.
Domain
Platforms / Technologies
Enterprise Storage
IBM, Quantum, Qumulo, Dell PowerScale/Isilon, NetApp, Hitachi, VAST Data, OpenDrives
Storage Types
File (NFS/SMB), block, object (S3), nearline, archive, LTO tape and libraries, HSM
Media Asset Management
Evertz Mediator X, Reach Engine, GV Framelight, Projective Strawberry, LucidLink, plus in-house MAM/DAM systems
Media Transport & Mobility
IBM Aspera (incl. Aspera on Cloud), Signiant, Resilio, SFTP/FTP, FXP, SMB, NFS, S3
Cloud & Hybrid
AWS S3; AWS-hosted Aspera, Signiant and Resilio; active-active, active-backup and tiering/bursting models
Compute Platforms
On-premises VMs and Kubernetes
Data Protection & DR
Replication, backup, multiple-copy preservation, tape, object and cloud-based protection; RTO/RPO and retrieval SLAs
Automation & CI/CD
Terraform, APIs, scripting, workflow automation, CI/CD pipelines, vendor-native tools
Observability
Datadog (primary), Splunk and other enterprise monitoring, logging and ing tools
4. Mandatory Skills & Experience
15+ years of enterprise architecture experience, with at least 8 years in enterprise storage and archive architecture.
Deep expertise in file, object, block, nearline, archive and tape technologies, including HSM, tiering and lifecycle policy design.
Proven experience with media and content-centric workflows such as broadcast, sports, post-production or digital media supply chains.
Strong grasp of media transport and content mobility (Aspera, Signiant or similar) and MAM/DAM integration.
Experience designing data protection, replication, DR and multi-site resiliency with defined RTO/RPO and retrieval SLAs.
Hybrid-cloud storage architecture experience, ideally AWS S3, covering tiering, bursting and active-active models.
A track record of creating standards, reference architectures, patterns, ADRs and governance artefacts.
Experience leading vendor evaluations, PoCs and product selection across multiple storage OEMs.
Excellent written and verbal communication, facilitation and stakeholder management, including executive-level presentation.
5. Desirable Skills
These skills strengthen a profile but are secondary to core storage and archive architecture depth:
Working knowledge of Infrastructure-as-Code and automation (Terraform, Ansible, REST APIs, Python/PowerShell scripting).
Experience designing for observability using Datadog and/or Splunk.
Familiarity with application and software components such as CMS, databases, Kubernetes (CSI/persistent storage) and Kafka.
Exposure to storage platform consolidation and migration programs for large unstructured media estates (petabyte scale).
Understanding of security controls for storage: access control, encryption and immutability.
Skills
Mandatory Skills : NetApp Storage Systems
Apply today or share profiles at priya@smartitframe.com