Senior VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Architect | W2 Role

Senior VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Architect / Engineer Location: Vienna, VA - Onsite

Responsibilities may include:

• Lead technical discovery and assessment of existing VMware environments, including architecture, configurations, clusters, hosts, networking, storage, security, integrations, and operational dependencies.
• Develop target-state VCF 9 architectures and associated technical design recommendations.
• Develop deployment and upgrade methodologies, implementation sequencing, validation approaches, rollback considerations, and technical execution plans.
• Validate VCF 9 prerequisites, supported upgrade paths, hardware and software compatibility, firmware, licensing, configuration, and interoperability requirements.
• Assess compatibility of third-party plug-ins, software integrations, storage platforms, backup solutions, replication technologies, security platforms, and other supporting systems.
• Identify unsupported or incompatible third-party integrations and supporting technologies.
• Provide recommended replacement or alternative solutions for affected integrations, storage platforms, backup solutions, replication technologies, or other supporting technologies, where applicable.
• Perform hands-on VCF 9 build, configuration, deployment, upgrade, integration, and troubleshooting activities.
• Configure and validate applicable VCF management, compute, networking, storage, security, and supporting platform services.
• Evaluate backup, recovery, and replication dependencies as they relate to the target VCF 9 architecture.
• Support continued asynchronous replication of applicable workloads to designated disaster recovery locations and validate interoperability with the target VCF 9 environment.
• Integrate with and validate interoperability of existing array-provided synchronous replication solutions where applicable, without assuming responsibility for architecture or redesign of the underlying storage replication platform.
• Perform application and workload discovery to support architecture, migration planning, dependency identification, and workload validation.
• Plan and execute representative workload migrations to validate migration methodology, interoperability, connectivity, and platform readiness.
• Perform infrastructure-level post-migration validation, including virtual machine status, network connectivity, storage accessibility, replication functionality where applicable, and basic infrastructure service availability.
• Assess and validate applicable hybrid-cloud connectivity and integrations with Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS), including applicable government cloud environments.
• Identify and troubleshoot complex VMware, infrastructure, integration, and interoperability issues encountered during deployment and validation.
• Provide technical leadership and engineering guidance to customer stakeholders, project personnel, and junior engineering resources.
• Document architecture decisions, implementation details, technical findings, risks, compatibility concerns, exceptions, and recommended next steps.
• Develop and maintain applicable architecture diagrams, configuration documentation, implementation procedures, and validation results.
• Provide technical knowledge transfer to designated customer personnel.

Preferred Qualifications and Experience

• 8+ years of progressively responsible VMware virtualization, data center, or private-cloud engineering experience.
• Demonstrated experience architecting, deploying, upgrading, and supporting VMware Cloud Foundation environments.
• Advanced knowledge of VMware vSphere, vCenter, ESXi, SDDC Manager, NSX, and related VCF platform technologies.
• Experience transitioning or migrating existing VMware environments to VMware Cloud Foundation.
• Experience with VMware lifecycle management, upgrades, patching, image management, and platform health validation.
• Strong understanding of enterprise networking, storage, backup, replication, disaster recovery, and workload migration technologies.
• Experience integrating VMware with enterprise SAN/NAS storage and backup/recovery platforms.
• Understanding of asynchronous and synchronous replication technologies, workload recovery dependencies, and RPO/RTO concepts.
• Experience developing migration strategies, implementation plans, runbooks, rollback procedures, and validation criteria.
• Experience troubleshooting complex VMware infrastructure, migration, storage, networking, and interoperability issues.
• Experience with hybrid-cloud connectivity and integrations involving Microsoft Azure and AWS.
• Strong technical documentation, architecture, communication, and customer-facing skills.
• Experience supporting regulated environments is preferred.
• Applicable VMware certifications or equivalent demonstrated VCF architecture and engineering expertise are preferred.