Role Overview

We are looking for an OpenStack Architect (L4) to own the technical direction, design, and long-term health of our private cloud platform built on OpenStack. Design scalable, resilient, and secure infrastructure, mentor engineers. The ideal candidate should have strong hands-on architectural experience, deep technical competency, and a demonstrated track record of designing, implementing, and managing large-scale infrastructure environments

Key Responsibilities

- Own the end-to-end architecture of our OpenStack-based private cloud, including compute (Nova), networking (Neutron), storage (Cinder, Swift, Ceph), identity (Keystone), orchestration (Heat), and image management (Glance)
- Design for scale, high availability, disaster recovery, and multi-region/multi-AZ deployments
- Define and evolve the platform roadmap in partnership with engineering leadership, aligning infrastructure investments with business needs
- Lead capacity planning, performance tuning, and cost-optimization efforts across compute, storage, and network resources
- Drive automation and Infrastructure-as-Code practices (Ansible, Terraform, Kolla-Ansible/TripleO, CI/CD pipelines) to reduce manual operations and improve deployment velocity
- Architect and enforce security best practices: network segmentation, RBAC, encryption at rest/in transit, compliance with relevant standards (SOC 2, PCI-DSS, HIPAA, FedRAMP, etc. as applicable)
- Own upgrade strategy and execution for OpenStack releases with minimal service disruption
- Design integration points between OpenStack and adjacent systems — Kubernetes (via Magnum or external clusters), monitoring/observability stacks, storage backends (Ceph, NetApp, etc.), and CMDB/ITSM tooling
- Serve as the escalation point for complex, platform-wide incidents; lead root cause analysis and drive systemic fixes




- Mentor and technically guide platform engineers and SREs; conduct architecture reviews and set engineering standards
- Evaluate emerging technologies and vendor solutions, and make build-vs-buy recommendations
- Produce architecture documentation, runbooks, and design decision records (ADRs)
- Partner with security, network, and compliance teams on audits and risk assessments

Technical Skills

- 8+ years in infrastructure/cloud engineering, with 4+ years of hands-on OpenStack architecture and operations at scale
- Deep expertise across core OpenStack services (Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Keystone, Glance, Heat) and at least one deployment toolchain (Kolla-Ansible, TripleO, OpenStack-Ansible, or Charmed OpenStack)
- Strong Linux systems background (RHEL/CentOS/Ubuntu), including networking (VXLAN, OVS/OVN, BGP), storage (Ceph or equivalent SDS), and virtualization (KVM/QEMU)
- Proven experience designing HA architectures and leading production upgrades with minimal downtime
- Proficiency with Infrastructure-as-Code and automation tooling (Ansible, Terraform, Python scripting)
- Solid understanding of networking fundamentals (routing, firewalls, load balancing, SDN concepts)
- Experience with monitoring/observability tooling (Prometheus, Grafana, ELK/EFK, or similar)
- Track record of technical leadership — driving architecture decisions across teams, not just within one

Soft Skills

- Strong analytical and troubleshooting skills
- Excellent verbal and written communication
- Customer-focused approach
- Positive documentation and reporting practices
- Strong ownership and accountability
- Team collaboration and mentoring skills
- Effective incident management and escalation discipline

Preferred Certifications

- COA – Certified OpenStack Administrator
- RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer)
- RHCSA (Red Hat Certified System Administrator)
- LFCS (Linux Foundation Certified System Administrator)
- OpenStack Foundation Certification (Preferred)
- Docker Certified Associate (Preferred)

📌 OpenStack Support- Private Cloud Operations (Thiruvananthapuram)
🏢 KniTT
📍 Thiruvananthapuram