Lead Infrastructure Architect

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Position Summary (Purpose of Job)

The Lead Infrastructure Architect defines and governs enterprise infrastructure architecture across hybrid and public cloud, compute, virtualization, storage, data protection, data center and colocation services, identity foundations, resilience, supporting platform services, and the connectivity dependencies required to support compute and platform workloads. The role establishes target-state architectures, reference patterns, standards, and multiyear roadmaps that improve reliability, security, scalability, cost efficiency, operational performance, and business agility.

Operating with the highest level of autonomy, the Lead Infrastructure Architect partners with enterprise architecture, cybersecurity, engineering, operations, application teams, service owners, and business stakeholders to evaluate technology options, guide workload-placement decisions, validate infrastructure designs, and lead migration planning from current-state platforms to strategic target architectures. The role provides final infrastructure architecture recommendations and governs exceptions through established architecture decision forums.

The role provides technical leadership for enterprise transformation initiatives, including hybrid-cloud adoption, platform modernization, legacy retirement, data center and colocation evolution, resilience improvement, technical debt reduction, and M&A integration or separation. The architect translates complex technical options into clear business decisions by articulating value, cost, risk, dependencies, operational impact, and implementation tradeoffs for technical and nontechnical leaders.

Key Responsibilities

•  Set infrastructure strategy and roadmaps. Define target-state architectures and multiyear roadmaps across cloud, compute, virtualization, storage, backup and recovery, connectivity dependencies for compute and platform workloads, colocation, and shared infrastructure platform services. Align roadmaps across infrastructure, security, application, and enterprise architecture domains.

•  Establish workload-placement direction. Define decision principles for placing workloads across public cloud, private cloud, on-premises, colocation, and distributed infrastructure based on business criticality, security, performance, resilience, regulatory requirements, cost, latency, and operational supportability.

•  Design end-to-end infrastructure solutions. Translate business and technical requirements into logical and physical infrastructure architectures. Validate capacity, performance, availability, recovery, security, observability, automation, and supportability for high-impact initiatives.

•  Lead infrastructure modernization. Provide architecture leadership for hybrid-cloud adoption, virtualization modernization, platform consolidation, data center and colocation transitions, technology currency, and legacy-platform retirement. Define transition states, migration waves, dependencies, and risk controls.

•  Govern standards and exceptions. Own infrastructure reference architectures, approved patterns, technology standards, architecture decision records, and design-assurance criteria. Lead enterprise quality reviews and manage exceptions through the appropriate governance forums.

•  Drive resilience and recovery architecture. Define patterns for high availability, backup, disaster recovery, cyber recovery, geographic redundancy, and service continuity. Ensure designs align to service-level objectives, recovery-time and recovery-point objectives, failure-domain requirements, and recovery-testing expectations.

•  Direct implementation and operational transition. Guide engineering teams through implementation and modification activities, resolve complex cross-platform design issues, and ensure solutions are deployable, observable, supportable, testable, and sustainable in steady-state operations.

•  Institutionalize well-architected practices. Embed security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, sustainability, and operational excellence into infrastructure designs. Establish architecture KPIs and OKRs and recommend adjustments that accelerate measurable value.

•  Optimize cost and lifecycle value. Develop architecture options that address total cost of ownership, capacity, consumption, licensing, vendor support, platform lifecycle, and avoided-cost opportunities. Ensure modernization creates a clear path to retire displaced platforms and reduce duplication.

•  Evaluate strategic technologies and vendors. Assess architectural fit, interoperability, product roadmap, support model, lifecycle risk, concentration risk, commercial implications, and alignment to enterprise standards. Provide fact-based recommendations and reference implementations.

•  Influence and coach. Communicate architecture options, risks, and tradeoffs to senior leaders and nontechnical stakeholders. Mentor architects and engineers, strengthen architecture practices, and drive adoption of modern platform engineering, DevOps, automation, and infrastructure-as-code approaches. 

•  Oversee M&A infrastructure architecture. Lead infrastructure due diligence, separation and integration planning, transitional-state design, dependency analysis, migration sequencing, and risk mitigation. Align technical teams and senior stakeholders to the target-state infrastructure vision. 

Minimum Requirements 

•  Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience and typically 10+ years of relevant infrastructure architecture or engineering experience. Fewer years may be accepted with relevant Master’s or Doctorate qualifications. 

•  Sustained leadership of enterprise-scale, cross-platform infrastructure programs in complex or regulated environments. 

Critical Skills (Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities) 

•  Enterprise infrastructure architecture mastery. Deep experience across hybrid cloud, compute, virtualization, storage, data protection, colocation, shared platform services, and the infrastructure connectivity dependencies required to support those environments. 

•  Architecture strategy and governance. Demonstrated ownership of target-state roadmaps, reference architectures, standards, decision frameworks, architecture decision records, design assurance, and exception management. Working knowledge of TOGAF concepts and ADM is preferred. 

•  Hybrid and multicloud architecture. Experience with workload placement, landing-zone dependencies, compute and platform connectivity requirements, identity, security, observability, automation, governance, and cost management across one or more major cloud platforms. 

•  Infrastructure modernization and migration. Proven ability to lead legacy retirement, platform consolidation, technical debt reduction, data center or colocation transitions, technology currency, and complex migration planning. 

•  Resilience architecture. Expertise in high availability, backup, disaster recovery, cyber recovery, failure-domain design, geographic resilience, RTO/RPO alignment, and recovery validation. 

•  Infrastructure automation and platform engineering. Strong understanding of infrastructure as code, configuration management, policy as code, CI/CD, observability, self-service platform patterns, and automated compliance controls. 

•  Security by design. Ability to apply zero-trust principles, identity and privileged-access controls, segmentation, encryption, vulnerability management, secure configuration, and regulatory requirements to infrastructure patterns. 

•  IT service management alignment. Knowledge of ITIL 4 service value system and practices, with the ability to ensure supportability, service ownership, operational readiness, and lifecycle governance. 

•  Architecture visualization and documentation. Proficiency with C4, ArchiMate, or equivalent methods to communicate context, dependencies, components, interfaces, decisions, and tradeoffs to executive, product, engineering, security, and operations audiences. 

•  Financial and commercial acumen. Ability to develop TCO comparisons, value cases, capacity and consumption models, licensing considerations, and vendor-platform tradeoffs. 

•  Executive storytelling and decision rigor. Ability to frame options, value, cost, risk, dependencies, and tradeoffs with clear, implementable guidance for nontechnical audiences.

•  Technical leadership. Ability to influence without direct authority, coach architects and engineers, resolve cross-domain decisions, and build alignment across enterprise architecture, security, engineering, operations, and business stakeholders. 

•  L5 competency proficiency. Adaptability; Architecture and Master Planning; Collaboration and Partnership; Communication and Internal Marketing; Design Thinking; Digital Acumen; Problem Solving; Strategic Decision Making; Business Function Knowledge; Customer and Business Driven; and Leadership, all at Leading proficiency. 

Additional Qualifications 

•  Advanced architecture expertise in one or more major cloud or infrastructure platforms, supported by relevant certifications or equivalent demonstrated enterprise experience. 

•  Proven record of defining infrastructure standards and owning governance, exception management, and portfolio or enterprise architecture quality reviews. 

•  Demonstrated leadership from capability strategy and roadmap through implementation, migration, operational transition, and steady-state optimization. 

•  Experience aligning product, application, cybersecurity, engineering, operations, and service-management teams to operationalize target architectures and achieve measurable outcomes. 

•  Experience developing or contributing to business cases, TCO analysis, vendor evaluations, capacity planning, licensing optimization, and investment decisions. 

•  Experience establishing measurable architecture outcomes such as reliability improvement, resilience, risk reduction, platform adoption, technical debt retirement, cost efficiency, and operational performance. 

•  Experience supporting M&A infrastructure due diligence, integration, separation, or transition-service planning is preferred. 

We are proud to offer a competitive compensation package at McKesson as part of our Total Rewards. This is determined by several factors, including performance, experience and skills, equity, regular job market evaluations, and geographical markets. The pay range shown below is aligned with McKesson's pay philosophy, and pay will always be compliant with any applicable regulations. In addition to base pay, other compensation, such as an annual bonus or long-term incentive opportunities may be offered. For more information regarding benefits at McKesson, please click here.

Our Base Pay Range for this position

$122,100 - $162,800

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