Lead Storage & Data Architect

Job Title: Lead Storage Data Architect
Experience: 5+ years
Location:Pune, Maharashtra, India
Job Type: Contract/Freelance

Role purpose

Lead the technical design of the future storage and data-management platform for file/HPC and block, and for the data-management layer. Own the current-state assessment, data profiling, options appraisal and target architecture for these areas, producing vendor-neutral, procurement-ready artefacts that stand up to competitive procurement and support a safe, phased migration.

Requirements

Key responsibilities

• Lead the current-state assessment of the file/HPC (PowerScale/Isilon) and block (PowerMax) estate – architecture, capacity, utilisation, performance, resilience and lifecycle.
  
• Profile unstructured and research data (volumes, file counts, age/heat) and produce data maps identifying tiering and archive candidates.
  
• Design the data-management and orchestration layer – cataloguing, tagging, policy-driven tiering, lifecycle and long-term retention aligned to funding-agency and compliance obligations.
  
• Ensure a fast on-premises tier for HPC where cloud latency and bandwidth are unsuitable, within an overall tiered architecture.
  
• Produce vendor-neutral options appraisals weighing performance, capacity, archive and cloud on a whole-life CapEx/OPEX basis.
  
• Develop high- and low-level designs (HLD/LLD) for the target storage architecture (design phase).
  
• Define storage and data-management requirements; contribute to the requirements and risk registers; facilitate technical workshops with client teams and the (virtual) storage SME.
  
• Contribute to the costed design-phase estimate and roadmap for the Discovery gate, and ensure designs are secure-by-design and migration-ready.
  

Deliverables owned

• Current-state assessment for WS1, WS2 and WS4; data maps.
  
• Storage and data-management content of the Requirements Register and Risk Register.
  
• Options appraisal and target architecture (HLD/LLD) – design phase.
  
• Input to the Discovery Report and the design-phase estimate & plan.
  

Essential skills & experience

• Substantial experience designing enterprise storage at multi-petabyte scale, across both file and block.
  
• Deep, hands-on expertise with Dell PowerScale/Isilon and Dell PowerMax (or directly comparable scale-out NAS and enterprise block platforms).
  
• HPC / research-computing storage: parallel or scale-out file systems and high-throughput, low-latency workloads.
  
• Proven data-management design – cataloguing, tagging, policy tiering, lifecycle/retention and archive (object, tape/cold).
  
• Vendor-neutral architecture and options appraisal, with strong HLD/LLD documentation.
  
• Capacity and performance analysis from storage telemetry; whole-life cost modelling (CapEx vs OPEX).
  
• Hybrid-cloud storage awareness (e.g. object storage, Azure NetApp Files) and where cloud does and does not fit.
  
• Confident stakeholder engagement, workshop facilitation and clear technical writing.
  

Desirable

• Higher-education or research-intensive environments; long-term funding-agency data-retention obligations.
  
• Producing vendor-neutral designs that feed competitive procurements.
  
• Data governance / classification frameworks; tape cold-storage archive projects.
  

Certifications (desirable)

• Dell Technologies storage certifications (PowerScale/Isilon, PowerMax / PowerStore).
  
• Architecture framework such as TOGAF; Microsoft Azure fundamentals/associate.
  

Behaviours

• Evidence-led and consultative; comfortable challenging and being challenged (e.g. cloud-vs-on-prem for HPC) while staying vendor-neutral.
  
• Strong on-site collaborator who communicates clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders.