Infrastructure Architect
Job Description
ROLES AND RESPONSABILITIES | |
Key Accountability Areas | Key Activities |
Tactical | • Develop and execute the Infrastructure Roadmap for SANAD’s Greenfield environment, covering data center, network, cloud, and rig-site connectivity, ensuring alignment with business growth and ERP deployment timelines. • Plan and implement high-availability and disaster recovery architectures for critical systems hosted in OCI/GCP and in-Kingdom facilities, ensuring compliance with RTO/RPO targets and business continuity standards. • Define infrastructure capacity and scalability plans, including forecasting for compute, storage, network bandwidth, and cloud utilization, with ongoing optimization and cost control. • Lead vendor and service provider coordination, managing design reviews, implementation quality, SLA compliance, and post-deployment support for cloud, network, and managed services. • Develop and maintain infrastructure architecture standards and operational baselines (network topology, system configurations, security hardening), ensuring alignment with TOGAF and NCA-ECC guidelines. • Establish proactive monitoring and reporting frameworks, integrating telemetry from NMS (SolarWinds, Aruba Central, OCI/GCP native tools) with ITSM dashboards to enable predictive maintenance and operational visibility. • Collaborate cross-functionally with Cybersecurity, Applications, and Governance teams to ensure that all infrastructure operations adhere to compliance, audit, and IT governance requirements (change management, PDPL, asset control). |
Operational | • Oversee day-to-day IT infrastructure operations including servers, storage, network, backup, and cloud environments to ensure high availability, performance, and security. • Manage hybrid infrastructure components across on-premises, OCI, and GCP, ensuring consistent monitoring, patching, and configuration compliance. • Supervise rig-site connectivity operations, including SD-WAN (Aruba), VSAT, LTE/5G links, and ensure proactive fault management and redundancy testing. • Coordinate and oversee system deployments (servers, network devices, firewalls, storage) as part of rig mobilizations, data center build, or project expansions. • Implement and enforce operational standards for backup, DR testing, capacity management, and performance optimization across all infrastructure layers. • Monitor infrastructure health dashboards and incident queues using NMS and ITSM tools (e.g., SolarWinds, ManageEngine, ServiceNow) and ensure SLA adherence for incident resolution. • Ensure security hardening and compliance with NCA-ECC, PDPL, and Aramco standards across network, cloud, and on-prem systems in collaboration with the Cybersecurity team. • Manage vendor performance and service delivery, ensuring third-party providers (network, cloud, data center, and managed services) meet contractual SLAs and KPIs. • Maintain comprehensive infrastructure documentation, including network diagrams, configuration baselines, IP management, and change logs. • Provide escalation and technical leadership to the IT support team, ensuring knowledge transfer, operational readiness, and 24/7 infrastructure support coverage. Server 20XX and its roles, Virtualization (VMware and Hyper V) and Networking (Cisco). • Strong technical knowledge of SAN/storage architectures (including flash storage), backup solutions, disaster recovery and security architecture. • Strong technical knowledge of network concepts such as data center switching, LAN, WAN, network architecture, common firewall platforms and understanding of VSAT and radio link communication will be a plus • Technical knowledge of networking technologies and protocols including TCP/IP, QoS, IPT, Routing and Switching; Routing protocols; WAN Optimization technologies • Identified process improvement, prepare policy and procedure documentation • Performed post-construction review and validation of built solution to ensure it meets architectural standards |
People Management | · Guide infrastructure and network team through solution design, implementation, and optimization; ensure technical excellence and adherence to architectural standards. · work closely with ERP, Cybersecurity, Governance, and Operations teams to deliver integrated, secure, and high-availability solutions across the enterprise. · Lead and manage system integrators, managed service providers, and OEM partners to ensure quality delivery, SLA compliance, and alignment with SANAD’s architecture roadmap. · Build internal capability by mentoring team members, conducting technical workshops, and fostering a culture of accountability, innovation, and continuous improvement. |
Physical Working Conditions | · Office environment, will also be required to visit a Rig environment to understand the nature of the business |
JOB QUALIFICATIONS AND REQUIREMENTS | |
Knowledge and Experience | • 10+ years of progressive experience in IT infrastructure design, implementation, and operations, including at least 3–5 years in a technical lead capacity managing hybrid or multi-site environments. • Proven experience leading Greenfield or carve-out infrastructure programs, from design and vendor selection to deployment, transition to managed services, and operational handover. • Proven experience in hybrid cloud infrastructure management, particularly Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) covering compute, storage, networking, tenancy governance, and cost optimization. • Strong expertise in network architecture and operations, including SD-WAN (Aruba EdgeConnect / Orchestrator), LAN/WAN, firewalls (Palo Alto), and rig-site communication technologies (VSAT, LTE/5G, microwave). • Hands-on experience in data center operations including virtualization (VMware, Hyper-V), storage management (SAN/NAS), and DR/backup technologies. • Demonstrated understanding of IT security and compliance standards, particularly NCA-ECC, NIST and ISO 27001 with ability to embed them in daily operations. • Proficiency in IT service management (ITSM) and monitoring tools with strong knowledge of incident, change, and configuration management aligned with ITIL v4 practices. • Prior experience with drilling environment (VSAT, rig data acquisition networks) preferred. Knowledge of drilling rigs infrastructure and security landscape to provide a stable and reliable infrastructure is a plus. |
Education and Certifications | • Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or Computer Engineering (Master’s degree preferred). • Formal certification in Infrastructure Architecture, Cloud Technologies, or Network Engineering is an advantage. • Certifications (Preferred / Highly Desirable): • Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) Architect Associate / Professional – for cloud infrastructure design and governance. • Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect – for hybrid and multi-cloud architecture design. • Aruba Certified SD-WAN Professional / Expert (EdgeConnect / Orchestrator) – for rig and remote connectivity management.
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