Overview

A Network Architect is responsible for designing and governing network architecture that supports business services.
This includes translating requirements into scalable, secure, and resilient designs, and making informed trade-off decisions across cost, risk, and performance.

Responsibilities

Core Responsibilities
Architecture and Design
Design enterprise network architecture across data center, WAN, cloud, and hybrid environments
Define standards, patterns, and reference architectures
Ensure scalability, resiliency, and security by design
Trade-off and Decision Making
Balance performance, cost, risk, and operability
Evaluate competing approaches (e.g., overlay vs underlay, vendor vs open solutions)
Make design decisions at the system level rather than the device level
This is a key differentiator compared to a technical project manager or engineer
Vendor and Technology Neutrality
Evaluate technologies across multiple vendors (e.g., Cisco, VMware, Juniper) and open source.
Avoid designing around a single vendor’s constraints or bias




Select solutions based on best architectural fit
Complex Programme Delivery
Lead architecture across large, multi-domain programmes
Collaborate with infrastructure, security, cloud, and application teams
Own end-to-end design coherence rather than isolated components
Typically involves large-scale enterprise or highly regulated environments with multi-region and high-resilience requirements
Stakeholder Management (Conflict Handling)
Align stakeholders across security, operations, business, and vendors
Manage conflicting requirements such as:
Security vs usability
Cost vs resiliency
Speed vs governance
Drive decisions to closure through effective communication
Governance and Standards
Define and enforce network standards
Review designs to ensure alignment with architectural principles
Provide guidance to engineering and delivery teams

Requirements

Required Skills
Technical (Core Expectations)
Solid fundamentals:
Routing an

📌 Network Architect (Chennai)
🏢 Prodapt
📍 Chennai