Infrastructure Architect

Sanderson are seeking a seasoned Infrastructure Architect to lead a complex and high-impact on-premise to cloud migration for a major financial services organisation. With the end of a strategic data centre hosting contract approaching in Summer 2027, our client is accelerating plans to modernise their estate - migrating a large, mixed portfolio of applications to cloud or SaaS platforms.

This is a critical programme of work focusing on mainframe, open systems (AIX, Solaris, Linux, Windows), and SQL Server-based applications. You'll work closely with SMEs across multiple domains to assess and plan migration strategies that align with the organisation's future-state architecture - including AWS and Azure.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead architectural assessment and strategy for migrating legacy and mainframe applications to cloud platforms.
• Evaluate applications for multiple migration paths: decommissioning, replatforming, rewriting, SaaS replacement, or mainframe lift-and-shift.
• Analyse technical stacks and integrations (CICS COBOL, IMS, VSAM, QSAM, relational databases, flat file systems).
• Collaborate with application and infrastructure SMEs to define optimal target platforms and integration strategies.
• Provide architectural guidance on cloud-native solutions, including AWS Lambda, ECS/EKS, RDS, S3, EFS, and containerised/serverless platforms.
• Explore use of mainframe migration tooling, cloud-based COBOL runtimes, and compiler compatibility.
• Support migration of storage (NAS) and file systems, potentially to Azure NetApp Files or equivalent.
• Produce high-level and detailed migration approaches, including cost estimation, sizing, and performance projections.
• Ensure alignment with cloud best practices and enterprise standards.

Ideal Candidate Profile

• Proven experience as an Infrastructure Architect delivering on-prem to cloud and SaaS migrations in complex enterprise environments.
• Deep understanding of mainframe architectures, particularly CICS, COBOL, IMS, batch/online hybrid systems.
• Hands-on experience assessing legacy workloads and determining appropriate cloud-native migration paths.
• Knowledge of mainframe file systems and access methods (e.g., QSAM, VSAM).
• Familiarity with AWS (PaaS-first strategy): Lambda, ECS, EKS, RDS, EC2 custom builds, S3, EFS.
• Experience with Azure IaaS/PaaS, especially Azure SQL Managed Instance and file migration solutions like Azure NetApp Files.
• Comfortable working with hybrid estates: AIX, Solaris, Linux, Windows.
• Strong analytical skills: able to assess application characteristics (complexity, dependencies, business value, lifecycle) to guide migration choices.
• Excellent stakeholder engagement and communication skills - comfortable operating in ambiguous, multi-team environments.

Desirable

• Experience working with or migrating from on prem mainframe
• Exposure to containerised serverless architecture.
• Financial services or regulated industry background.

Reasonable Adjustments:

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