VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF 9) Architect / Engineer

VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF 9) Architect / Engineer

Position Overview

We are seeking an experienced VMware Cloud Foundation 9 (VCF 9) Architect / Engineer to design, deploy, migrate, and optimize enterprise VMware Cloud Foundation environments for customers across the United States.

This is a highly technical, customer-facing role requiring a combination of architecture expertise, hands-on engineering capability, strong communication and presentation skills, and a willingness to travel. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable developing a VCF architecture, working directly with infrastructure teams during implementation, troubleshooting complex issues, and presenting designs and recommendations to technical and executive stakeholders.

The position will support enterprise and large-scale infrastructure modernization initiatives and may involve extended customer engagements from initial discovery and design through deployment, migration, documentation, and operational transition.

Key Responsibilities

VCF Architecture & Design

• Architect enterprise solutions based on VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x.
• Develop High-Level Designs (HLDs) and Low-Level Designs (LLDs) for VCF environments.
• Design VCF management domains, workload domains, clusters, and supporting infrastructure.
• Design and implement VCF Fleet and VCF Instance architectures appropriate for customer availability and operational requirements.
• Develop compute, storage, networking, security, availability, and management architectures.
• Define infrastructure sizing, capacity, availability, resiliency, and scalability requirements.
• Develop multi-datacenter and disaster recovery architectures.
• Evaluate existing VMware environments and develop modernization and migration strategies.
• Translate business, application, security, and operational requirements into technical architecture.

VCF Engineering & Implementation

• Perform hands-on installation, configuration, and deployment of VCF 9 environments.
• Deploy and configure core VCF components, including:
  • VMware ESX
  • VMware vCenter
  • VCF Operations
  • VCF Automation
  • VCF Identity Broker
  • NSX
  • SDDC Manager and associated VCF lifecycle services
• Configure VCF management and workload domains.
• Configure VLAN-backed and NSX-based networking architectures as required.
• Integrate VCF with enterprise DNS, NTP, Active Directory, identity, certificate, monitoring, backup, and security services.
• Configure and validate lifecycle management and upgrade processes.
• Troubleshoot complex VMware infrastructure issues across compute, storage, networking, and management components.
• Assist customers with operationalizing newly deployed VCF environments.

Migration & Modernization

• Assess existing VMware environments and develop migration plans into VCF 9.
• Develop migration waves, dependency requirements, sequencing, rollback procedures, and validation plans.
• Support migrations between existing vSphere environments and new VCF workload domains.
• Assist with datacenter consolidation, infrastructure refresh, and platform modernization projects.
• Identify technical risks and dependencies that could impact migrations.
• Develop cutover and migration runbooks.
• Participate in production migration and cutover activities when required.

Storage & Networking

Candidates should have strong knowledge of enterprise storage and networking concepts, including:

• Fibre Channel and NVMe/FC
• NVMe/TCP
• NFS and block storage
• SAN fabrics
• Enterprise storage arrays
• VMware multipathing and storage best practices
• VMware Distributed Switches
• VLAN-based networking
• NSX networking concepts
• Physical and virtual network integration
• 10/25/40/100Gb Ethernet environments

Experience integrating VMware environments with platforms from vendors such as Pure Storage, NetApp, Dell, Cisco, Arista, or similar enterprise infrastructure vendors is highly desirable.

Customer-Facing & Presentation Responsibilities

This is not solely a back-end engineering position. The architect will regularly interact directly with customers and must be able to clearly communicate complex technical concepts.

Responsibilities include:

• Lead technical discovery and architecture workshops.
• Facilitate whiteboarding and solution-design sessions.
• Present architecture and design recommendations to customers.
• Present effectively to engineers, infrastructure leadership, architects, and executives.
• Explain technical tradeoffs and recommendations in business terms.
• Lead design reviews and obtain stakeholder agreement on architectural decisions.
• Develop professional PowerPoint presentations and technical documentation.
• Communicate project status, risks, dependencies, and technical issues clearly.
• Represent the consulting organization professionally while working onsite with customers.

Candidates should be comfortable presenting to a room, leading technical conversations, and defending architectural recommendations when challenged.

Documentation Responsibilities

Develop professional customer-facing deliverables including:

• High-Level Design documents
• Low-Level Design documents
• Current-state assessments
• Architecture diagrams
• Logical and physical infrastructure diagrams
• Network and storage connectivity diagrams
• Firewall and communication matrices
• Migration plans
• Implementation runbooks
• Operational procedures
• Configuration standards
• As-built documentation
• Executive and technical presentations

Experience with Microsoft Visio, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and similar documentation tools is expected.

Required Technical Experience

Candidates should have significant experience with several of the following:

• VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x
• VMware vSphere / ESX
• VMware vCenter
• VCF Operations
• VCF Automation
• NSX
• SDDC Manager
• VCF lifecycle management
• Enterprise server platforms
• Enterprise SAN and storage platforms
• Fibre Channel and/or NVMe storage technologies
• Enterprise Ethernet networking
• Active Directory and enterprise identity integration
• PKI and certificate management
• Backup and disaster recovery technologies
• Multi-site infrastructure architectures
• Datacenter migrations
• Infrastructure automation

Preferred Qualifications

• 7+ years of VMware infrastructure experience
• 3+ years of VMware Cloud Foundation experience
• Experience with VCF 5.x and/or VCF 9.x
• VMware VCP, VCAP, VCDX, or equivalent experience
• Experience designing large enterprise VMware environments
• Experience performing customer-facing consulting engagements
• Experience leading infrastructure design workshops
• Experience producing formal HLD and LLD documentation
• Strong troubleshooting and analytical skills
• Strong written and verbal communication skills
• Strong presentation and whiteboarding skills
• Experience working with healthcare, financial services, utilities, government, or other highly regulated enterprise environments is a plus.

Travel Requirements

This position requires a willingness and ability to travel to customer locations throughout the United States.

Travel may include:

• 5–7 consecutive days onsite for deployment, migration, workshops, or project milestones.
• Multiple onsite engagements throughout the year.
• Air travel and overnight stays.
• Occasional evening or weekend work associated with production migrations and cutovers.

When not required onsite, work may be performed remotely depending on project requirements.

Ideal Candidate

The ideal candidate is an architect who can engineer and an engineer who can architect.

We are looking for someone who can walk into a customer environment, understand the existing infrastructure, lead the technical conversation, design the future-state VCF architecture, document it professionally, present it confidently, and then participate directly in implementing the solution.

The successful candidate will be technically strong, self-directed, professional, comfortable working with enterprise customers, and willing to take ownership of complex infrastructure projects from discovery through design, implementation, migration, and operational handoff.