Senior Lead Architect - Backup & Disaster Recovery

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Lead Architect to lead our Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) initiatives. This role is critical to ensuring the resilience, availability, and recoverability of our cloud infrastructure and services. You will be responsible for designing, implementing, and educating other teams on enterprise-grade BDR solutions using Veeam, Zerto, and VMware Live Recovery. 

Job Summary: 

The Backup and DR Architect position works independently identifying areas of improvement in current processes, procedures, and technical challenges to drive innovation, scaling, and stability within RapidScale’s BDR solutions. This person will be responsible for collaborating with all teams to optimize deployment, performance, and support of our BDR product offerings. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in virtualization, cloud services, and infrastructure architecture, with a focus on delivering scalable and secure BDR environments that meet business needs. They will also review existing and create new reference architecture documents to establish standards and best practices for new implementations.

Other area's this person will impact are:

• Creating and maintaining knowledge base articles. 

• Work closely with Product and Operations teams on operationalizing new solutions and services or adding features to existing products and services to ensure smooth transitions and effective support for new features and products. 

• Developing and delivering training programs for support engineers and other relevant teams  

• Support the SE team, addressing any questions about solutions and new implementations for new opportunities.  

• Serving as an escalation point and liaison between the software vendors and Operations team when bugs are discovered. 

• For on-prem solutions, collaboration with the hosted cloud infrastructure team is essential to ensure infrastructure requirements and performance needs are met.  

• Working with the monitoring and implementations team to ensure all customer-managed devices are monitored adequately to meet SLOs. 

What you will do: 

• Design and implement backup-based cloud solutions, including Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam Cloud Connect. 

• Design and implement Zerto-based disaster recovery solutions, including Zerto Virtual Manager, Zerto Cloud Manager, Virtual Replication Appliances, and Zerto Cloud Connectors. 

• Design and implement VMware Live Recovery solutions, including Site Recovery Manager and Live Recovery integrations or other backup solutions. 

• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to gather requirements and define architecture solutions that align with business objectives. 

• Evaluate and recommend cloud services, backups and DR technologies that enhance performance, security, and cost-effectiveness. 

• Develop and maintain architecture documentation, including design specifications and implementation plans. 

• Monitor and optimize cloud infrastructure performance, ensuring high availability and reliability. 

• Design and document operational best practices and implementation standards within cloud environments. 

• Provide technical leadership and guidance to sales engineering, product development and operations teams to design, build, operate and maintain cloud environments. 

• Provide technical guidance on customer engagements to educate customers on RapidScale’s BDR solutions. 

• Troubleshoot and resolve complex technical issues related to Veeam, Zerto, and VMware Live Recovery or other backups and DR environments. 

• Stay current with industry trends and advancements in BDR technologies. 

• Code or script innovative methods to deliver and maintain our solution stack more quickly. 

• Work directly with the development team to connect automation built to our Portal UI. 

• Create and maintain a working relationship with RapidScale and Cox project management teams. 

• Lead and operate within the context of an established strategic direction and vision. 

Technical Skills: 

• Veeam Product Knowledge: In-depth understanding of Veeam solutions like Continuous Desktop Protection, Veeam Recovery Orchestrator, hardened Linux repositories and immutable backups, Veeam Cloud Connect and Veeam Backup Agents. 

• Zerto Knowledge: In-depth understanding of Zerto solutions like Virtual Protection Group configuration and optimization, DR runbook best practices, failover orchestration and replication monitoring. 

• VMware Live Recovery Knowledge: In-depth understanding of VMware Live Recovery, Site Recovery Manager, and VMware Cloud Foundation. 

• Cloud Technologies: Familiarity with cloud platforms (VMware, vCloud Director, AWS, Azure, GCP) and services, including virtualization and containerization. 

• Networking: Strong knowledge of networking concepts, including VPNs, firewalls, load balancers, and DNS. 

• Security: Understanding security best practices and compliance requirements related to cloud and virtual environments. 

• Scripting and Automation: Proficiency in scripting languages (PowerShell, Python) for automation of deployments and management tasks. 

• Monitoring and Performance Tuning: Ability to implement monitoring solutions and optimize performance across virtual environments. 

Minimum Requirements: 

• Bachelor’s degree in a related discipline and 8 years’ experience in a related field. The right candidate could also have a different combination, such as a master’s degree and 6years’ experience; a Ph.D. and 3 years’ experience in a related field; or 12 years’ experience in a related field

• Strong expertise in Veeam, Zerto, and VMware Live Recovery solutions and/or other BDR solutions. 

• Familiarity with cloud and virtualization platforms (e.g., VMware, Nutanix AWS, Azure, Google Cloud) and hybrid cloud architectures. 

• Relevant certifications (e.g., Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE), Zerto Certified Professional (ZCP), VMware Certified Professional (VCP), or similar are a plus.