Senior Principal Architect, OpenStack and OpenShift Virtualization

About the Job:

The Red Hat Consulting team is looking for an OpenStack and OpenShift Virtualization Senior Principal Architect with deep technical, strategic, and business leadership in modern infrastructure. In this role, you will be responsible for designing and guiding the implementation of complex solutions that help customers modernize their IT environments and migrate from legacy virtualization platforms to Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization.

You will work directly with customer architecture, development, and operations teams to understand their challenges and demonstrate how OpenShift, as a modern infrastructure platform, can enhance operational efficiency, developer productivity, and business continuity. You will serve as a subject matter expert, delivering workshops, proofs of concept, and tailored demonstrations that articulate the value of a unified platform for both containers and virtual machines.

What you will do:

• Architect and Design: Lead the design of complex, production-grade solutions based on Red Hat OpenStack Platform (RHOSO) and Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization, focusing on migrating workloads from traditional virtualization platforms.

• Customer Engagement: Lead Virtualization Migration Assessments (VMAs), technical discovery sessions, and workshops, to identify customer challenges and demonstrate the value of Red Hat's portfolio. Build strategic relationships and become a trusted advisor to senior technical and business leaders within customer organizations.

• Technical Leadership: Serve as a trusted advisor and subject matter expert on OpenShift Virtualization for customer and internal teams, guiding them through design, pilot, and production deployments.

• Problem Solving: Work with customers to identify challenges and blockers to the adoption of OpenShift Virtualization and collaborate with them to address their technical and business requirements.

• Collaboration: Work closely with Red Hat's product, engineering, professional services, and sales teams to ensure a world-class customer experience.

• Thought Leadership: Develop and share best practices, reusable assets, and architectural patterns for virtualization modernization, contribute to whitepapers and webinars, and speak at industry conferences.

What you will bring:

• Experience: 10+ years of experience in a senior technology role like enterprise architecture, consulting, or sales engineering, with a focus on large-scale infrastructure solutions and platform adoption.

• Virtualization Expertise: Extensive knowledge and hands-on experience with virtualization technologies such as KVM, VMware vSphere, or libvirt, including application deployment and operations.

• OpenShift and Kubernetes Expertise: Significant experience with Kubernetes and container platform deployments in large organizations, preferably with Red Hat OpenShift. Direct, practical experience with OpenShift Virtualization and migrating virtual machines is essential.

• OpenStack Expertise: Deep experience with Red Hat OpenStack Platform, including its core components, architecture, and production deployment considerations.

• Datacenter and Networking Knowledge: Deep datacenter experience with compute, storage, and networking integration. Knowledge of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) technologies such as OVN, NSX-T, or Cisco ACI is required.

• Linux Foundation: Deep knowledge of Linux operating systems, preferably Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) or its derivatives, in production enterprise environments.

• Consulting Acumen: Excellent communication, presentation, and problem-solving skills, with the ability to understand customer challenges and build long-lasting relationships.

• Travel: Willingness to travel to customer locations regularly.

Nice to Have:

• Experience with automation frameworks and tools like Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform.

• Red Hat certifications (e.g., Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Virtualization, RHCA, RHCE).

• Experience with one or more public cloud providers (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud).

• Experience in a consulting or professional services role for a major software company.

About Red Hat

Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterpriseopen source software solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies. Spread across 40+ countries, our associates work flexibly across work environments, from in-office, to office-flex, to fully remote, depending on the requirements of their role. Red Hatters are encouraged to bring their best ideas, no matter their title or tenure. We're a leader in open source because of our open and inclusive environment. We hire creative, passionate people ready to contribute their ideas, help solve complex problems, and make an impact.

Inclusion at Red Hat
Red Hat’s culture is built on the open source principles of transparency, collaboration, and inclusion, where the best ideas can come from anywhere and anyone. When this is realized, it empowers people from different backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences to come together to share ideas, challenge the status quo, and drive innovation. Our aspiration is that everyone experiences this culture with equal opportunity and access, and that all voices are not only heard but also celebrated. We hope you will join our celebration, and we welcome and encourage applicants from all the beautiful dimensions that compose our global village.

Equal Opportunity Policy (EEO)
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