Cloud Platform Architect (Private Cloud)

Role: Senior Cloud Platform Architect (Private Cloud) Location: Sheffield, UK(Hybrid, 2 days in a week) 6 Months contract Job description Responsibilities: Define and drive Private Cloud architecture aligned with Client Cloud Strategy Provide hands on technical leadership across virtualization containers Kubernetes, Kafka and microservices platforms Review architecture designs and ensure solutions are secure scalable resilient and cost effective Establish engineering standards reference architectures reusable patterns and platform guardrails Lead the design and evolution of private cloud platform components including compute storage networking orchestration and platform services Drive platform consistency across development testing and production environments Translate business and technology requirements into actionable platform engineering roadmaps Own Kubernetes architecture decisions including cluster design multitenancy ingress service mesh secrets management observability upgrade strategies and workload onboarding Establish GitOps CICD automation and configuration management standards Provide technical leadership for Kafka and EventDriven Architecture adoption Define Kafka governance partitioning strategies resiliency patterns schema management monitoring and capacity planning Guide engineering teams on microservices architecture domain design resiliency API contracts and operational readiness Improve developer experience through selfservice capabilities templates golden paths and platform tooling Embed SecuritybyDesign identity management vulnerability management auditability and operational excellence practices Collaborate with Product Owners Architects Engineering Teams Cyber Security and SRE teams Influence technical strategy and engineering decisions across CTO platform domains To be successful in this role you should have Proven experience as a Senior Architect Lead Engineer Staff Engineer Platform Architect or equivalent Strong Private Cloud and Platform Engineering background Deep expertise in at least two of the following VMware or Virtualization Technologies Kubernetes and Container Platforms KafkaEvent Streaming Platforms Strong Kubernetes experience including cluster operations networking upgrades multitenancy policy management observability and workload onboarding Strong Kafka architecture operations governance security and capacity planning experience Deep understanding of Distributed Systems Networking Fault Tolerance Performance Tuning and Capacity Planning Experience with Infrastructure as Code IaC and CICD practices Strong understanding of Security Controls Change Management Risk Management and Production Readiness Experience working in regulated enterprise environments Strong stakeholder management and technical leadership skills Excellent communication and architecture documentation capabilities Experience with Service Mesh technologies is desirable Knowledge of API Gateways Secrets Management and PolicyasCode is preferred Experience with Observability platforms including Metrics Logs and Traces Experience building PlatformasaProduct capabilities such as developer portals and selfservice platforms Knowledge of MultiRegion ActiveActive and Resilience Testing architectures is advantageous Mandatory Skills : Kafka, Kubernetes, Microservices, VMware and Virtualization TPBN1_UKTJ