Lead Platforms - Virtualization

Job Summary

• Lead the agile solution design, deployment & ongoing optimization & evolution of less complex enterprise wide technology platforms & delivery systems

Job Description

Role Purpose

• Own the strategy, engineering, resilience and operational excellence of enterprise virtualization platforms across on-premises, hybrid-cloud and modern infrastructure environments.

About the Role

• We are seeking an exceptional Lead Platforms professional specialising in Virtualization to shape the design, evolution and operational excellence of our enterprise virtualization estate.
• This senior leadership role sets platform strategy and technical direction while ensuring virtualization services remain modern, resilient, secure, cost-effective and aligned to business needs across the organisation.
• As a key technology leader, you will own the end-to-end lifecycle of the virtualization platform, from architecture and engineering through service operations, optimisation and modernisation.
• You will enable infrastructure agility, workload mobility, engineering excellence and dependable customer outcomes while actively managing technology concentration, lifecycle and vendor risks.

What You Will Lead & Deliver

Platform Strategy, Direction Setting & Architecture

• Define and articulate a clear virtualization platform vision, strategy and multi-year roadmap aligned to business strategy and Group Technology architecture standards.
• Set the target architecture for enterprise virtualization across compute, network, storage, security, automation, disaster recovery and cloud integration.
• Partner with CIOs, CTO, Architecture, Engineering, Security, Cloud and Product teams to translate business and workload requirements into platform capabilities.
• Identify opportunities to simplify, standardise and modernise the virtual estate, including workload placement, private cloud, container integration and exit or diversification strategies where appropriate.

Platform Engineering, Design & Delivery

• Lead the design, deployment and evolution of enterprise virtualization platforms, including VMware vSphere / VMware Cloud Foundation, Microsoft Hyper-V, Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization or equivalent technologies relevant to the target architecture.
• Drive automation-first engineering using infrastructure-as-code, APIs, configuration management, policy-as-code and self-service provisioning.
• Engineer scalable and repeatable platform patterns for clusters, hosts, virtual machines, templates, images, networking, storage, backup and recovery.
• Ensure platform solutions are secure by design, highly available, testable, observable and supported through clear engineering standards and lifecycle controls.

Platform Performance, Quality & Optimisation

• Own platform health, capacity, availability, performance, demand, cost-to-serve and customer-experience measures.
• Use telemetry and analytics to improve resource utilisation, right-size workloads, reduce capacity waste and prevent performance saturation.
• Establish standards, service guardrails, reference patterns, runbooks and technical debt remediation plans.
• Drive platform hygiene across firmware, hypervisors, management components, tools, hardware compatibility, certificates and end-of-support exposure.

Resilience, Incident, Change & Risk Management

• Act as the senior escalation point for major virtualization incidents, systemic service degradation and complex platform defects.
• Lead rapid restoration, technical problem management and root-cause elimination with minimal business impact.
• Own resilience engineering across high availability, fault domains, backup integration, disaster recovery, recovery testing and capacity headroom.
• Ensure compliance with security, vulnerability, patching, change, audit, SLA/OLA, licensing and technology-risk requirements.

People Leadership & Capability Development

• Build, lead and coach high-performing virtualization and platform engineering squads, fostering agile delivery, accountability, continuous learning and engineering mastery.
• Develop a centre of enablement that partners across infrastructure, cloud, application and business technology teams.
• Recruit, retain and grow engineering talent through succession planning, skills development and forward-looking capability planning.
• Create a strong operational culture focused on automation, service ownership, measurable outcomes and continuous improvement.

Financial, Commercial & Vendor Management

• Lead platform financial planning, unit-cost modelling, capacity investment, licence optimisation and cost reduction initiatives.
• Manage strategic technology partners, contracts, support models, renewals and vendor performance across the virtualization ecosystem.
• Mitigate vendor concentration and lock-in risk through commercial insight, architecture optionality, portability and disciplined technology lifecycle decisions.
• Build evidence-based investment cases for platform modernisation, estate optimisation and technology transitions.

Experience Required

• 8-10 years of experience in enterprise infrastructure or platform engineering, including leadership accountability for large-scale virtualization services.
• Proven leadership across virtualization architecture, engineering, operations, modernisation, resilience and service management in complex regulated environments.
• Deep knowledge of hypervisor and virtual infrastructure concepts, including clustering, high availability, live migration, resource scheduling, virtual networking, software-defined storage and workload lifecycle management.
• Practical experience with enterprise virtualization technologies such as VMware vSphere / VMware Cloud Foundation, Microsoft Hyper-V, KVM and/or Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.
• Understanding of automation and orchestration technologies such as Terraform, Ansible, PowerShell, Python, APIs and CI/CD toolchains.
• Experience integrating virtualization with storage, backup, disaster recovery, observability, identity, security, CMDB and IT service management capabilities.
• Strong knowledge of hybrid-cloud operating models, workload placement, private cloud, containers and migration or modernisation patterns.
• Commercial acumen across licensing, vendor management, capacity economics, asset lifecycle and total cost of ownership.
• Strong stakeholder management, executive communication and cross-functional leadership skills.
• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Engineering or a related field. Relevant industry certifications are advantageous.

Leadership Outcomes

• Resilient services - Stable, recoverable virtualization services with measurable reduction in repeat incidents, technical debt and unsupported components.
• Modern engineering - Automated, policy-driven and repeatable platform delivery with reduced manual effort and faster fulfilment.
• Efficient estate - Transparent capacity, utilisation, licence and unit-cost outcomes supported by active optimisation and decommissioning.
• Controlled risk - Clear ownership and remediation of security, lifecycle, audit, vendor and concentration risks.
• Customer value - Reliable platform capabilities that improve workload onboarding, engineering productivity and service experience.

Why Join Us?

• Lead one of the bank’s most critical infrastructure platform domains with direct influence on technology strategy, resilience and transformation.
• Work within an engineering culture focused on automation, modernisation, operational excellence and measurable customer value.
• Help shape Platforms as a Service and the evolution of hybrid infrastructure across the organisation.
• Build future-ready virtualization capabilities at enterprise scale.

Apply Today

• If you are a visionary virtualization platform leader who thrives in complex environments and enjoys shaping resilient, automated and future-ready engineering ecosystems, we would love to meet you.

• Bachelor's Degree: Information Technology

End Date: October 7, 2026