Network Architect

Job Profile Summary Responsible for the strategic architecture, design, and technical direction of Rackspace's global data center and wide area network (WAN) infrastructure, with a primary focus on healthcare customer environments. Serves as the senior technical authority for data center fabric and WAN transport, including the high-bandwidth, low-latency network underlay required to support high-performance compute (HPC) and other data-intensive workloads. Translates healthcare business, clinical, and regulatory requirements into scalable, resilient, and secure network architectures. Acts as a liaison with vendors and third-party providers and partners closely with engineering, security, and customer teams to guide the network's strategic direction across highly available, compliance-driven healthcare infrastructure. This is a network architecture role focused on the connectivity fabric that delivers bandwidth and throughput to compute and storage platforms, not on designing or administering the HPC compute clusters themselves. Location: US Remote - Work from Home with up to 25% Travel Career Level Summary Recognized as an expert within the company and requires in-depth and/or breadth of expertise in own job discipline and broad knowledge of other job disciplines within the organization function Solves unique, high-impact problems that affect multiple teams, products, or customers Contributes to the development of organizational sub-function strategy, including data center and WAN roadmaps Works independently, with guidance sought only in the most complex or novel situations Progression to this level is typically restricted on the basis of business requirements Critical Competencies Excellence: Exceeds expectations by consistently demonstrating accountability, discipline, high performance, and a proven track record of exceptional results. Customer-driven: Prioritizes customer needs and satisfaction through collaborative and proactive problem-solving, and an unwavering commitment to customer success. Expertise: Possesses deep understanding of customer needs and continually grows and enhances skills to provide customer-focused solutions. Agility: Quickly adapts and responds to dynamic customer needs and expectations through innovative solutions. Compassion: Cultivates a positive and supportive environment to effectively work together towards a common goal, fostering trust within Rackspace and with external stakeholders. Key Responsibilities Owns end-to-end architecture of the global data center fabric, including spine-leaf and Clos-based designs, EVPN/VXLAN overlay, and high-density, low-latency topologies that support both enterprise and HPC workloads Architects and evolves the enterprise WAN, including MPLS, SD-WAN, dark fiber, and DWDM transport, to deliver resilient, low-latency connectivity between data centers, campuses, and cloud on-ramps Architects high-bandwidth, non-blocking network fabrics that deliver the throughput, low latency, and lossless transport required by HPC, GPU cluster, and distributed storage workloads (network connectivity only; does not design or manage the compute/HPC cluster itself) Defines routing and control-plane architecture across BGP, OSPF, and EVPN, including multi-site route policy, redistribution, and traffic engineering Leads capacity planning and lifecycle strategy for data center and WAN infrastructure, balancing performance, redundancy, and cost Serves as the highest-level escalation point for complex, service-impacting data center and WAN incidents, driving root-cause analysis and long-term remediation Owns and is held accountable to defined delivery metrics for data center and WAN infrastructure including network availability %, MTTR for service-impacting incidents, and RTO/RPO targets for clinical-failover scenarios as established with healthcare customers and internal stakeholders. Coordinates incident communication and downtime procedures with hospital IT, clinical/nursing informatics, and biomedical engineering teams during service-impacting events affecting patient-care systems Partners with network security architecture teams to ensure segmentation, firewall policy, and access-control designs align with data center and WAN topology Develops automation and infrastructure-as-code practices (Python, Ansible, or equivalent) to standardize provisioning, validation, and change management across the fabric Plans and executes network changes around clinical change-freeze windows and blackout periods (e.g., surgical schedules, EHR go-lives), coordinating timing with hospital operations to avoid disruption to patient-care systems Researches, evaluates, and recommends emerging data center, WAN, and HPC networking technologies and vendors based on performance, scalability, and business value Leads implementation planning and peer design reviews for major infrastructure initiatives, including new data center builds, fabric refreshes, and WAN transport migrations Creates and maintains architecture documentation, low-level and high-level design (LLD/HLD) artifacts, network diagrams, and standard operating procedures Mentors and provides technical guidance to network engineers and architects across the organization Contributes to disaster recovery and business continuity planning for data center and WAN environments, with attention to the uptime and failover requirements of clinical and patient-care systems Designs network architecture to support healthcare-specific workloads, including EHR/EMR platforms (e.g., Epic, Cerner), PACS/medical imaging, HL7/FHIR integration engines, and connected medical devices, as well as life-safety network domains such as nurse call systems, physician paging, and emergency communication networks Ensures data center and WAN designs align with HIPAA, HITRUST, and other healthcare regulatory and compliance requirements, partnering with security and compliance teams on network segmentati