Infra & AI Architect

Azure Infrastructure Architecture 

• Design enterprise-scale Azure architectures using Azure Landing Zones and cloud adoption principles. 

• Define subscription, management group, resource organization, naming, tagging, and governance models. 

• Design hub-and-spoke and Virtual WAN architectures. 

• Architect hybrid connectivity using ExpressRoute, VPN, Azure Virtual WAN, and private connectivity. 

• Design Azure networking including VNets, subnets, routing, NSGs, Azure Firewall, Application Gateway, load balancers, NAT Gateway, Private Link, and Private Endpoints. 

• Define scalable DNS and private DNS architecture. 

• Design resilient solutions across Availability Zones and Azure regions. 

• Define business continuity, disaster recovery, backup, and high-availability strategies. 

Identity, Security & Governance 

• Design identity architectures using Microsoft Entra ID. 

• Define managed identity, workload identity, role-based access control, privileged access, and least-privilege models. 

• Implement security architecture using Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Microsoft Sentinel, Azure Policy, Key Vault, encryption, and customer-managed keys. 

• Design secure administrative and privileged-access patterns. 

• Define network segmentation and Zero Trust architecture. 

• Ensure architecture aligns with enterprise security, regulatory, data sovereignty, and compliance requirements. 

Observability & Operations 

• Design centralized and distributed monitoring architectures using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, and Microsoft Sentinel. 

• Define logging, monitoring, alerting, operational dashboards, and telemetry strategies. 

• Design infrastructure that supports SRE and modern cloud operations. 

• Define operational readiness, service health, capacity management, incident response, and troubleshooting approaches. 

• Drive infrastructure automation and configuration consistency. 

AI & AI-Ready Infrastructure 

• Design secure enterprise AI platforms using Microsoft Foundry/Azure AI services and supporting Azure capabilities. 

• Define networking, identity, compute, storage, data, security, and monitoring requirements for enterprise AI workloads. 

• Design private and controlled access patterns for AI environments. 

• Architect solutions supporting:  

• Generative AI 

• AI agents 

• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) 

• Enterprise search 

• Vector and semantic search 

• Embeddings 

• Model endpoints and AI services 

• Define secure connectivity between AI applications, enterprise data sources, APIs, and business systems. 

• Establish AI platform governance, responsible AI, security, monitoring, and operational controls. 

• Support integration of AI solutions with the broader Microsoft cloud ecosystem. 

Automation & Platform Engineering 

• Drive Infrastructure as Code using Bicep, ARM templates and/or Terraform. 

• Define reusable architecture patterns, templates, and platform components. 

• Support CI/CD and DevOps-based infrastructure deployment. 

• Promote policy-driven governance and automated environment provisioning. 

• Design self-service platform capabilities where appropriate. 

Architecture Leadership 

• Lead customer architecture and technical design workshops. 

• Gather functional and non-functional requirements. 

• Develop High-Level Designs and detailed technical designs. 

• Produce architecture diagrams, decision documents, implementation guidance, and design standards. 

• Conduct architecture reviews and identify technical risks and dependencies. 

• Provide technical direction to engineering and implementation teams. 

• Troubleshoot complex architecture, networking, identity, security, and platform issues. 

• Conduct design reviews and ensure implementation remains aligned to the approved architecture. 

Customer & Stakeholder Engagement 

• Act as a trusted technical advisor to customer architects and technology leadership. 

• Explain complex cloud and AI concepts in clear business language. 

• Present architecture options, trade-offs, risks, costs, and recommendations. 

• Collaborate with application, security, network, data, AI, governance, and operations teams. 

• Help customers establish cloud and AI adoption roadmaps. 

• Support solution estimation, implementation planning, risk management, and technical governance. 

Required Technical Skills 

Azure Infrastructure 

• Azure Landing Zones 

• Hub-and-Spoke / Virtual WAN 

• Azure networking and routing 

• ExpressRoute and VPN 

• Azure Firewall 

• Application Gateway / WAF 

• Private Link / Private Endpoints 

• Azure DNS / Private DNS 

• Azure Load Balancer 

• Azure compute and storage 

• Availability Zones and multi-region architecture 

• Backup and disaster recovery 

Identity & Security 

• Microsoft Entra ID 

• Azure role-based access control 

• Managed identities 

• Key Vault 

• Customer-managed keys 

• Azure Policy 

• Defender for Cloud 

• Microsoft Sentinel 

• Zero Trust security principles 

AI 

• Microsoft Foundry / Azure AI 

• Generative AI architecture 

• AI agents 

• RAG architecture 

• AI Search 

• Vector and semantic search 

• Model integration 

• Prompt and AI security 

• Responsible AI 

• AI monitoring and governance 

Monitoring & Operations 

• Azure Monitor 

• Log Analytics 

• Application Insights 

• Microsoft Sentinel 

• Cloud operational models and SRE concepts 

Automation 

• Bicep / ARM 

• Terraform 

• Azure DevOps / GitHub 

• CI/CD 

• PowerShell / Azure CLI 

Architecture Competencies 

The successful candidate should demonstrate the ability to: 

• Convert business requirements into end-to-end Azure architecture. 

• Make architecture decisions across infrastructure, networking, security, identity, data, operations, and AI. 

• Evaluate multiple technical approaches and clearly explain trade-offs. 

• Design for security, reliability, scalability, performance, manageability, and cost. 

• Lead complex enterprise architecture discussions involving multiple technology domains. 

• Balance Microsoft platform capabilities with customer constraints and existing enterprise environments. 

• Move comfortably between whiteboard architecture, detailed technical design, and implementation troubleshooting.