Senior Hosting & Cloud Solution Architect

Senior Hosting & Cloud Solution Architect

Salary: Competitive Plus Benefits Location: London Store Support Centre and Home, London, EC1M 6HA Contract type: Permanent Business area: Sainsbury's Tech Closing date: 21 July 2025 Requisition ID: 400006407

We’d all like amazing work to do, and real work-life balance. That’s waiting for you at Sainsbury’s. Think about the scale it takes for us to feed the nation. The level of data, transactions and variety it involves. Then you’ll realise that ours is a modern software engineering environment because it has to be. We’ve made serious investment into a Tech Academy and into setting standards and principles. We iterate, learn, experiment and push ways of working such as Agile, Scrum and XP. So you can look forward to awesome opportunities in everything from AI to reusable tech.

Why join us

Joining Sainsbury's Tech means becoming part of a leading, multi-channel, multi-brand retailer where you have the opportunity to shape the technology that powers our business. As a Senior Architect, you will play a vital role in defining the technical roadmap for your area of responsibility, collaborating with engineering teams to design innovative products and services. We foster an agile and empowered work culture that encourages collaboration, innovation, and continuous learning. As part of our inclusive and diverse team, you will have the chance to influence the overall technical architecture, contribute to cloud-native designs, and drive the adoption of cutting-edge technology principles. Join us to make a purposeful contribution, be part of a dynamic and inclusive environment, and embrace the exciting challenges of transforming the retail industry.

We are seeking a highly skilled and experienced Solution Architect (Hosting & Cloud Infrastructure) to lead the design and implementation of robust, scalable, and secure hosting and cloud infrastructure solutions. This role is critical in supporting our enterprise retail systems, ensuring seamless integration between cloud and on-premises environments, and driving innovation in hybrid cloud connectivity.

Key Responsibilities:

• Design and deploy cloud infrastructure solutions across AWS, Azure, GCP and hybrid environments.
• Develop and prototype technical architecture components in the private and public cloud environments
• Assess and recommend the best of breed technology solutions and frameworks to address the needs, run proof of concepts/architectures for key design decisions
• Design and optimize cloud connectivity using technologies such as AWS Transit Gateway, Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, and other interconnect solutions.
• Lead the design of enterprise EPOS systems and payment connectivity architectures for retail environments.
• Collaborate with cross-functional teams to ensure infrastructure aligns with business and security requirements.
• Provide technical leadership in cloud-integrated hypervisor platforms such as VMware VMC and Azure Local.
• Develop and maintain infrastructure as code using Terraform, CloudFormation, and Ansible.
• Ensure high availability, disaster recovery, and backup strategies are in place and tested.
• Support identity and access management strategies including IAM, SSO, MFA, and PAM.
• Contribute to infrastructure cyber security initiatives and compliance efforts.
• Stay current with emerging technologies and evaluate their potential impact on the business.

Qualifications & Experience:

• Hands-on expertise in designing and deploying with one or more cloud platforms (AWS , Azure, GCP or OCI)
• Experience in designing and architecting cloud transformation projects (On-prem to Cloud) and cloud deployment projects from scratch
• Expertise on Well-Architected Cloud Framework concept
• Strong knowledge of cloud-integrated hypervisor platforms: VMware VMC, Azure Local.
• Experience in Co-Lo Equinix Connectivity and Equinix Fabric.
• Proven experience in hybrid cloud connectivity technologies:
  • AWS Transit Gateway , Direct Connect, PrivateLink
  • Azure ExpressRoute, Private Link
  • OCI FastConnect
  • GCP Interconnect
• Hosting: DNS, DHCP, Data Centres, Physical Hardware, Virtualization, SAN/NAS, Storage Replication, Backup and DR.
• Connectivity: LAN/WAN, Switches, Routers, Firewalls, SD-WAN, VPN, IDS/IPS, Key Management.
• Cloud Platforms: AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle Cloud; IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, Hybrid Cloud.
• Infrastructure as Code: Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible.
• Identity & Access Management: AD, AAD, IAM, SSO, MFA, PAM.
• Cyber Security: Infrastructure-level security best practices and tools.
• AI Integration: Familiarity with AI tools and their day-to-day usage in infrastructure management.

Key Competencies:

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management.
• Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
• Strategic thinking with attention to detail.
• Passion for innovation and continuous improvement.
• Architecture and design of Enterprise EPOS and Payment systems is a plus.
• TOGAF Foundation or Practitioner Certifcation is a plus
• AWS or Azure Solutions Architect Certification is a plus

We are committed to being a truly inclusive retailer, so you’ll be welcomed whoever you are and wherever you work. Around here, there’s always the chance to try something new - whether that’s as part of an evolving team or somewhere else across the business - and we take development seriously and promise to support you. We also recognise and celebrate colleagues when they go the extra mile and, where possible, offer flexible working. When you join our team, we’ll also offer you an amazing range of benefits. Here are some of them:

 Starting off with colleague discount, you'll be able to get 10% off at Sainsbury's, Argos, TU and Habitat after 4 weeks. This increases to 15% off at Sainsbury’s every Friday and Saturday and 15% off at Argos every pay day. We've also got you covered for your future with our pensions scheme and life cover. You'll also be able to share in our success as you may be eligible for a performance-related bonus of up to 20% of salary, depending on how we perform.

 Your wellbeing is important to us too. You'll receive an annual holiday allowance, and you can buy additional holiday. We also offer other benefits that will help your money go further such as season ticket loans, interest free car loan of up to £10k, cycle to work scheme, health cash plans, pay advance (where you can access some of your pay before pay day) as well access to a great range of discounts from hundreds of other retailers. And if you ever need it there is also an Employee Assistance Programme, you will also be eligible for private healthcare too.

Moments that matter are as important to us as they are to you which is why we give up to 26 weeks’ pay for maternity or adoption leave and up to 4 weeks’ pay for paternity leave.

 Please see www.sainsburys.jobs for a range of our benefits (note, length of service and eligibility criteria may apply).