Infrastructure Lead - Manchester

Infrastructure Lead

• Location - Manchester
• Salary - £50,000 - £65,000, D.O.E.
• Reports to - Head of Technical Services

The role

We is looking for an Infrastructure Lead to join as the most senior operational resource within a dedicated managed services team, supporting complex hybrid cloud and on-premises infrastructure platforms for multiple customers.

This is a hands-on technical leadership role, not a purely managerial one, you'll be the person others turn to when an issue can't be resolved at the first line, and you'll own it through to a fix.

You'll act as the technical authority for the operational team: taking ownership of complex incident resolution and root cause analysis, leading platform engineering and hardware lifecycle work, and mentoring Infrastructure Engineers as they develop their own skills. You're expected to be comfortable making high-stakes calls under pressure during major incidents, and to drive resolution when nobody else can.

Day to day, that means leading the technical response to P1 and P2 major incidents, managing Dell VxRail and VMware VCF platform lifecycle operations, overseeing Veeam backup architecture and Azure DR strategy, and delivering capacity management reporting.

You'll present complex RFCs at the weekly Change Advisory Board, manage vendor escalations with Dell, HPE, VMware (Broadcom) and Microsoft, and contribute to quarterly strategic reviews.

While you won't hold the Solution Architect title, you're expected to understand the target architecture well enough to make sound operational decisions day-to-day and to know when a change needs formal architectural review. You'll also sit on the on-call rota as the most senior responder, providing escalation support when the team needs it.

What you'll be doing

Incident response & problem management

• Lead technical response to P1 and P2 major incidents
• Own root cause analysis, delivering RCA reports within 5 working days of closure
• Chair post-incident review sessions

Platform engineering

• Manage Dell VxRail cluster upgrades, node expansion, firmware and VSAN health
• Run advanced troubleshooting and optimisation of VMware VCF - vSphere, VSAN and NSX
• Maintain HPE ProLiant hardware (firmware via SPP, break-fix coordination) and administer HPE MSA 2050 SAN storage

Backup, DR & cloud

• Own Veeam Backup & Replication architecture, policy design and recovery testing, maintaining a >98% success rate
• Oversee Azure DR strategy, landing zone governance and hybrid platform management

Reporting & governance

• Deliver monthly capacity management reports across compute, storage and backup
• Prepare and present RFCs to the weekly Change Advisory Board, with risk assessment and rollback plans
• Manage vendor escalations with Dell, HPE, VMware (Broadcom) and Microsoft

Improvement & automation

• Build and maintain PowerShell and Bash/Ansible automation for operational tasks
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency across the customer estate

What you'll bring

• 10+ years in enterprise infrastructure engineering or operations, ideally including managed services delivery
• Expert-level VMware VCF - vSphere 7/8, VSAN and NSX-T - including troubleshooting and lifecycle management
• Hands-on Dell VxRail HCI experience: deployment, lifecycle management, and VSAN health
• Strong HPE ProLiant (Gen 7-10) knowledge, including iLO and SPP deployment
• HPE MSA 2050 SAN administration
• Expert Veeam Backup & Replication skills
• Good working knowledge of Microsoft Azure - governance, backup/ASR, Update Manager, Sentinel and Arc
• Advanced Windows Server and Linux administration
• Solid grounding in ITIL change and incident management, including CAB participation
• Willingness to join a 1-in-5 weekly on-call rotation

Nice to have

• Dell PowerProtect Data Manager or Cyber Recovery
• Zerto or RecoverPoint for VM-level DR replication
• VMware Aria Operations for capacity analytics
• Oracle Linux or SUSE Linux Enterprise administration
• SQL Server administration fundamentals
• Azure Bicep/ARM template development

Qualifications

Required

• VMware VCP-DCV or VCAP (or equivalent)
• Microsoft AZ-104 (Azure Administrator Associate) or equivalent

Desirable

• Dell VxRail Deploy certification, or equivalent demonstrated experience
• HPE Accredited Solutions Expert (ASE)
• Veeam Certified Engineer (VMCE)