Architect jobs in United Kingdom

Sword is a leading provider of business technology solutions within the Energy, Public and Finance Sectors, driving transformational change within our clients. We use proven technology, specialist teams and domain expertise to build solid technical foundations across platforms, data, and business applications. We have a passion for using technology to solve business problems, working in partnership with our clients to help in achieving their goals.

We’re growing our Infrastructure Architecture capability to support a series of modernisation and transformation programmes across multiple client environments. These programmes span traditional on-premise estates, hybrid architectures, and next-generation software-defined data centres — all requiring secure, resilient, expertly engineered compute and storage foundations.

The Server & Storage Architect to take ownership of designing and evolving these platforms across multiple sites. You’ll shape the future of virtualisation, server, storage and HCI platforms, ensuring they are aligned to business needs, security expectations, and modern SDDC principles.

This is a role for someone who can see the full picture — turning requirements into robust architectures, guiding engineering teams through delivery, and helping clients transform the way they operate their compute and storage environments.

• Define and own server and storage architectures across multi-site environments, spanning both traditional and hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).
• Lead virtualisation strategy and design using platforms such as VMware vSphere, Hyper‑V, KVM and Nutanix.
• Architect multi‑site compute and storage fabrics, including clustering, DR, replication and long‑term capacity planning.
• Develop architectures aligned to software‑defined data centre (SDDC) concepts, including NSX, vSphere and vSAN.
• Specify and standardise hardware platforms, storage arrays and HCI nodes, incorporating performance, sizing and resilience considerations.
• Produce HLDs, LLDs, bills of materials and implementation guidance to support end‑to‑end delivery.
• Work alongside security teams to harden platforms, ensuring best‑practice patching, secure baselines, access control and monitoring.
• Collaborate with application, networking and security teams to ensure solutions are coherent, integrated and aligned to business SLAs.
• Provide technical leadership during deployments, migrations and major changes, acting as an escalation point for complex issues.
• Contribute to architectural standards, patterns and reference designs, keeping pace with vendor evolution and industry best practice.

• Deep expertise in virtualisation technologies, ideally across multiple platforms including vSphere, Hyper‑V, KVM and Nutanix.
• Experience designing multi‑site compute and storage environments with HA, clustering and DR considerations.
• Expertise across traditional server/storage technologies (SAN/NAS) and modern HCI solutions.
• Awareness of OT operational constraints, regulated environments or Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) considerations.
• Good understanding of SDDC principles and technologies such as NSX and vSAN.
• Ability to produce high‑quality architectural documentation (HLD/LLD) and guide engineering teams through implementation.
• Solid knowledge of Microsoft infrastructure fundamentals (Windows Server, AD, DNS, DHCP).
• Experience applying secure configuration, patching and access control best practices.
• Networking knowledge at a foundational/CCNA‑equivalent level (VLANs, routing, switching).

• Exposure to VDI platforms (e.g., Horizon, Citrix, AVD).
• Experience working in regulated or operational technology (OT) environments.
• Familiarity with major server/storage vendors (Dell, HPE, Lenovo, NetApp, Pure).

At Sword, our core values and culture are based on caring about our people, investing in training and career development, and building inclusive teams where we are all encouraged to contribute to achieve success.

We offer comprehensive benefits designed to support your professional development and enhance your overall quality of life. In addition to a Competitive Salary, here's what you can expect as part of our benefits package:

• Personalised Career Development: We create a development plan customised to your goals and aspirations, with a range of learning and development opportunities within a culture that encourages growth.
• Flexible working: Flexible work arrangements to support your work‑life balance. We can’t promise to always be able to meet every request, however, are keen to discuss your individual preferences to make it work where we can.
• A Fantastic Benefits Package: This includes generous annual leave allowance, enhanced family friendly benefits, pension scheme, access to private health, well‑being, and insurance schemes, an employee assistance programme, discounted cash plan and more….

At Sword we are dedicated to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace and are proud to be an equal opportunities employer, ensuring that all applicants receive fair and equal consideration for employment, regardless of whether they meet every requirement. If you don’t tick all the boxes but feel you have some of the relevant skills and experience we’re looking for, please do consider applying and highlight your transferable skills and experience. We embrace diversity in all its forms, valuing individuals regardless of age, disability, gender identity or reassignment, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity status, race, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation. Your perspective and potential are important to us.

If we can do anything to help make the hiring process more accessible, please let our talent acquisition team know when you apply so we can support any adjustments.