Edge Architect

Senior / Principal Edge Architect - Factory Edge & Hybrid Infrastructure

£500 per day | Inside IR35 | Predominantly Remote | 6-Month Rolling Contract

We're looking for an experienced Senior or Principal Edge Architect to provide architecture leadership and design authority for a major enterprise Factory Edge programme.

This is an opportunity to shape the architecture of a distributed edge computing platform supporting manufacturing environments, spanning virtual machines, containerised applications, industrial systems, data platforms and AI workloads.

You'll define the reference architecture, establish reusable infrastructure patterns and guide technology decisions to ensure factory edge deployments are scalable, secure, resilient and operationally sustainable.

The role is predominantly remote, with occasional onsite visits to factories in Merseyside (approximately one day per month).

Contract details

Day rate: £500 per day, Inside IR35

Duration: Initial 6 months, rolling contract with potential for extension

Location: Remote, with occasional onsite attendance in Merseyside

Working arrangement: Predominantly remote

Programme: Client Edge as a Service

The role

As Edge Architect, you'll own the target architecture and technical direction for an enterprise factory-edge hosting service, helping establish a standardised platform that can be deployed consistently across a geographically distributed manufacturing estate.

You'll define architecture standards and reusable hosting patterns for traditional virtual machine workloads, Kubernetes and containers, manufacturing applications such as MES and UNS, legacy systems, and emerging AI and GPU-enabled workloads.

Working across infrastructure, cloud, networking, cyber security, OT, applications and operations, you'll act as a design authority, ensuring technology choices are aligned with business requirements, resilience expectations, security controls and long-term operational needs.

Key responsibilities

Own the target architecture and evolution roadmap for the Factory Edge hosting service.

Define the edge reference architecture, solution designs, technical standards and architectural guardrails.

Develop repeatable site configurations covering standard, small-scale, high-availability and AI/GPU-enabled edge deployments.

Evaluate and recommend technologies across edge computing, hyper-converged infrastructure, virtualisation, storage and container platforms.

Assess solutions such as Azure Local, Dell Distributed Private Cloud, Dell NativeEdge and other relevant technologies against business and technical requirements.

Define architecture patterns for compute, storage, virtualisation, Kubernetes, observability, automation, backup and disaster recovery.

Assess workload suitability and determine appropriate placement across edge, core data centre and cloud environments.

Lead migration architecture for legacy applications and new manufacturing workloads, including UNS and MES.

Establish resilience, recovery and lifecycle-management strategies appropriate to factory criticality.

Lead or support architecture assurance, document key decisions and manage exceptions to agreed standards.

Provide technical leadership across infrastructure, network architecture, security, operations, engineering and application teams.

Promote standardisation, knowledge transfer and sustainable service ownership while minimising bespoke solutions and technical debt.

Essential experience

Proven experience as a Senior, Principal or Lead Solution Architect, ideally within enterprise infrastructure, hybrid cloud or distributed computing environments.

Strong architecture expertise across virtualisation, hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI), Windows/Linux platforms, storage and resilient infrastructure.

Experience designing and governing distributed infrastructure platforms or edge computing environments.

Strong understanding of Kubernetes, container platforms and modern application hosting patterns.

Experience designing highly available and recoverable services for business-critical workloads.

Knowledge of observability, infrastructure automation/IaC, platform lifecycle management and cloud integration.

Proven ability to create enterprise reference architectures, high-level designs (HLDs), architecture decision records and technical standards.

Experience evaluating technology options and translating business requirements, non-functional requirements and operational constraints into clear architecture decisions.

Strong stakeholder management skills, with the confidence to provide design authority across multiple technical domains.

Desirable experience

Experience in manufacturing, industrial environments, factory edge or IT/OT architecture.

Experience with Azure Local, Dell Distributed Private Cloud, Dell NativeEdge, VMware, Nutanix or comparable edge and hybrid infrastructure platforms.

Exposure to GPU-enabled edge AI, computer vision or local AI inferencing.

Understanding of enterprise cyber security, zero-trust architecture and distributed operational models.

Experience supporting large-scale platform rollouts, application migrations or technology standardisation across multiple sites.

Key deliverables

You'll lead the creation and governance of the architecture artefacts needed to establish a repeatable Factory Edge service, including:

Enterprise Factory Edge Reference Architecture and evolution roadmap.

Standard site archetypes and reusable edge hosting configurations.

Workload suitability, placement and migration criteria.

Architecture decision records, technical guardrails and design standards.

High-availability, resilience, backup and disaster recovery patterns.

Technology assessments and platform recommendations.

Migration architecture and technical assurance for factory deployments.

What success looks like

You'll establish a small set of reusable architecture patterns that meet the needs of the majority of factory sites, reducing unnecessary complexity and bespoke engineering.

Architecture decisions will be documented, consistent and governed, with clear justification for technology choices and workload placement. Factory deployments will benefit from defined resilience and recovery standards, understood operational risks and a platform architecture that can evolve as manufacturing and AI requirements develop.

Interested? If you're an experienced Edge or Solution Architect who can set technical direction, evaluate hybrid infrastructure platforms and turn complex requirements into scalable, repeatable architecture, we'd like to hear from you