Senior Infrastructure and Security Architect

The job

The Senior Infrastructure and Security Architect designs what gets built, leads the security practice, and is in the room when a business owner is deciding what the next two years of their technology look like.

This is a hands-on architecture role rather than a management one, though it carries real mentoring responsibility and real influence over how the technical side of this company works. If your idea of seniority involves getting further away from the equipment, this is the wrong job.

Full-time and exempt. Reports to the Owner and General Manager. The salary carries a performance incentive tied to solution design and proposal outcomes, because a quarter of this role is commercial and paying it as flat salary would misprice the job.

What you would be doing

Architecture and design

• Design complex client infrastructure, and oversee it being built
• Architect Microsoft 365 and Azure environments, including identity, security, and governance
• Design business continuity and disaster recovery, and prove it by testing it
• Build multi-year technology roadmaps a client can actually budget against

The security practice

• Lead client security assessments, and the remediation programs that come out of them
• Be the senior escalation point for security incidents
• Own our security standards and what we offer
• Support compliance-driven engagements: CMMC, HIPAA, NIST, and PCI where they apply

Clients and commercial work

• Sit with clients at owner and executive level, and put technical direction in business terms
• Support solution scoping and proposals as the engineer in the room
• Act as the senior technical advisor on our strategic client relationships

Technical leadership

• Provide technical direction and mentoring to the engineering team
• Review and improve internal standards, procedures, and documentation
• Be the final escalation point on a major incident

What you need

Applicants must meet all of the following.

• Seven or more years of professional IT experience, including three or more in an architecture, lead engineer, or principal role
• Advanced network and infrastructure design: routing, switching, segmentation, firewall architecture, and site-to-site connectivity
• Deep Microsoft 365 and Azure architecture experience, including identity, conditional access, and cloud security posture
• A substantive cybersecurity background: assessment, remediation planning, and control implementation, rather than incidental familiarity
• A record of leading complex technical projects to completion
• Business continuity and disaster recovery design, and the validation that goes with it
• The ability to present to a non-technical executive audience and hold the room
• Demonstrated authorship of process, standards, and documentation
• A valid driver's license
• Legal authorization to work in the United States without sponsorship
• Able to work on-site full-time at the Painesville or Hudson office

What helps

• CISSP or CISM. This is the credential that holds its value in this space, and it lets us name a certified architect in a proposal to a regulated client
• Demonstrated CMMC, HIPAA, or NIST 800-171 assessment and remediation work. Given the defense supply chain in this region, that experience is arguably worth more to us than any single certification
• Microsoft expert-level certifications
• Technical leadership inside a managed service provider
• Pre-sales or solution architecture experience where you carried commercial accountability

What this role is not

• Not a management position. No direct reports. Mentoring and technical direction, yes. Headcount, no.
• Not remote or hybrid. On-site five days a week. The regional architect market is now overwhelmingly remote, we know this is a significant thing to ask, and the band reflects it.
• Not a pure architecture role. Roughly a quarter of the job is commercial: scoping, proposals, and sitting with owners. Somebody who wants to design and hand off will not enjoy it.
• Not an IT Director or security officer role, and it does not pay like one. Those seats pay well above this band at larger employers. If you are moving from one, this is a pay reduction, and it should be a deliberate choice about scope, autonomy, and where it leads rather than about money.

What good looks like in a year

• Clients treat you as their advisor rather than as their vendor's representative
• The infrastructure and security work you designed is still standing up a year later
• Standards you wrote get adopted without anybody enforcing them
• Client security posture measurably better than it was
• The technical direction of this company materially better for you being here

Working conditions

Office and client sites, with regular travel to client locations across Northeast Ohio. Occasional after-hours work for major migrations and security incidents.