Datacenter Architect

Role details

Who is Trace3 ? Trace3 is a leading Transformative IT Authority, providing unique technology solutions and consulting services to our clients. Equipped with elite engineering and dynamic innovation, we empower IT executives and their organizations to achieve competitive advantage through a process of Integrate, Automate, Innovate. Our culture at Trace3 embodies the spirit of a startup with the advantage of a scalable business. Employees can grow their career and have fun while doing it! Trace3 is headquartered in Irvine, California. We employ more than 1,200 people all over the United States. Our major field office locations include Denver, Indianapolis, Grand Rapids, Lexington, Los Angeles, Louisville, Texas, San Francisco. Ready to discover the possibilities that live in technology? Come Join Us! Street-Smart - Thriving in Dynamic Times We are flexible and resilient in a fast-changing environment. We continuously innovate and drive constructive change while keeping a focus on the “big picture.” We exercise sound business judgment in making high-quality decisions in a timely and cost-effective manner. We are highly creative and can dig deep within ourselves to find positive solutions to different problems. Juice - The “Stuff” it takes to be a Needle Mover We get things done and drive results. We lead without a title, empowering others through a can-do attitude. We look forward to the goal, mentally mapping out every checkpoint on the pathway to success, and visualizing what the final destination looks and feels like. Teamwork - Humble, Hungry and Smart We are humble individuals who understand how our job impacts the company's mission. We treat others with respect, admit mistakes, give credit where it’s due and demonstrate transparency. We “bring the weather” by exhibiting positive leadership and solution-focused thinking. We hug people in their trials, struggles, and failures – not just their success. We appreciate the individuality of the people around us. * This position can be either W2 Contract or FTE JOB SUMMARY: The Regional Senior Principal Engineer/Enterprise Architect IV serves serves as a customer-facing technical lead for the discovery, architecture, design, and modernization of secure on-premises and hybrid datacenter environments. The role translates mission objectives, business requirements, workload needs, operational constraints, and security obligations into practical, supportable architectures for regulated and mission-critical customers. The role requires broad, hands-on architecture knowledge across compute, networking, storage, virtualization, containers, automation, cybersecurity, Zero Trust Architecture, AI infrastructure, and Microsoft GCC-High hybrid-cloud solutions. Success requires strong technical judgment, analytical and project-management skills, executive presence, and the ability to communicate effectively with customers, engineers, partners, and sales teams. SUMMARY OF ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS: Serve as the senior, customer-facing technical lead for datacenter discovery, architecture, design, modernization, and solution shaping engagements. Lead structured workshops with executive sponsors, engineering, infrastructure, platform, cybersecurity, compliance, program-management, and application stakeholders. Translate mission objectives, user and workload requirements, performance targets, availability goals, growth expectations, recovery objectives, and regulatory constraints into actionable architectures. Develop and communicate end-to-end modern datacenter architectures spanning compute, accelerated/GPU compute, network, storage, backup and disaster recovery, virtualization, containers, shared services, observability, and operational management. Design hybrid-cloud solutions integrating on-premises environments with Microsoft Azure Government and Microsoft GCC-High while addressing identity, secure connectivity, data protection, workload placement, governance, compliance, and operational boundaries. Apply Zero Trust Architecture and defense-in-depth principles across identity, access, segmentation, endpoint and workload protection, encryption, key and certificate management, logging, observability, vulnerability management, and security operations. Perform capacity planning, workload placement, performance analysis, resiliency planning, technology evaluation, lifecycle planning, and migration or modernization planning for current and target environments. Produce reference architectures, high-level and detailed designs, diagrams, sizing inputs, bills of materials, implementation roadmaps, controls mappings, assumptions, risks, and decision records. Present complex technical concepts to technical and non-technical audiences; lead architecture reviews, whiteboarding sessions, demonstrations, proposal responses, statements of work, and executive briefings. REQUIRED SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE: Demonstrated experience as a customer-facing technical lead, enterprise architect, solutions architect, principal engineer, or equivalent for complex datacenter or infrastructure modernization initiatives. Substantive architecture experience across the modern datacenter stack, including x86 compute, accelerated/GPU compute, servers, HCI or converged infrastructure, switching and routing, storage, backup and disaster recovery, virtualization, containers, management platforms, monitoring, and physical datacenter considerations. Strong knowledge of virtualization architecture, including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, or comparable hypervisor technologies; clustering, high availability, resource management, encryption, lifecycle management, and migration considerations. Working knowledge of Kubernetes and enterprise container platforms, including control-plane and worker-node design, registries, namespaces, resource isolation, cluster operations, and platform security. Strong networking knowledge, including Ethernet and high-speed datacenter fabrics, VLANs, VRFs, routing, segm