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 segmentation and PHI data-flow controls
- Maintains audit-ready evidence of network segmentation and PHI data-flow controls to support customer HIPAA/HITRUST assessments and regulatory audits
- Architects provable tenant-to-tenant traffic isolation across shared data center and WAN infrastructure, ensuring one health system customer's PHI-bearing traffic cannot be accessed by or commingled with another's
- Supports high-availability architecture for mission-critical healthcare environments, including hospital and clinical site connectivity, disaster recovery, and zero/near-zero downtime failover
- Participates in a 24x7 on-call support rotation supporting clinical operations, with defined incident response and escalation SLAs
Knowledge
- Expert-level knowledge of data center fabric architecture, including spine-leaf design, VXLAN/EVPN overlays, and multi-site fabric interconnect
- Expert-level knowledge of WAN architecture, including MPLS, SD-WAN, and optical/DWDM transport design
- Advanced knowledge of BGP and OSPF design, troubleshooting, and traffic engineering across multi-site environments
- Strong knowledge of network security architecture and its integration with data center and WAN design
- Working knowledge of equipment and platforms from multiple vendors, such as Cisco, Aruba, and Palo Alto Networks
- Working knowledge of healthcare IT infrastructure and compliance requirements, including HIPAA, HITRUST, and network architecture supporting EHR/EMR, PACS, and clinical/biomedical device connectivity
- Working knowledge of Business Associate Agreement (BAA) implications when selecting or onboarding network transport, colocation, or cloud on-ramp vendors that touch PHI-adjacent traffic
Skills
- Data Center & WAN Architecture and Design
- High-Bandwidth Network Fabric Design for HPC/GPU Workloads
- Advanced Routing & Switching (BGP, OSPF, EVPN/VXLAN)
- Network Automation & Infrastructure-as-Code (Python, Ansible)
- Capacity Planning & Traffic Engineering
- Healthcare Network Compliance (HIPAA/HITRUST) & PHI Data-Flow Design
- Complex Troubleshooting & Root Cause Analysis
- Technical Documentation & Network Diagramming (LLD/HLD)
- Vendor & Stakeholder Management
- Coaching & Mentoring
- Client/Customer Service
Nice to Have
- Familiarity with HL7/FHIR interface engines and medical device network integration (biomedical/IoMT)
- Prior experience architecting infrastructure for hospital systems, health systems, or healthcare SaaS providers
- Experience with cloud on-ramp and hybrid connectivity (AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute, or equivalent)
- Exposure to network detection and response / traffic analysis tools (e.g., ExtraHop)
Education
- High School Diploma or regional equivalent required
- Bachelor's Degree required, preferably in a related field. At the manager's discretion, additional relevant experience may substitute for the degree requirement
Certifications
- CCNP or higher required (Enterprise, Data Center, or Service Provider track); CCIE strongly preferred
- Data center or cloud networking certifications (e.g., Cisco Data Center, Arista ACE, Juniper JNCIE) a plus
- Healthcare compliance certifications (e.g., HITRUST CCSFP, HCISPP) a plus
Experience
- 15+ years of progressive network engineering/architecture experience required, including hands-on experience architecting data center fabric and WAN transport, with demonstrated experience building high-bandwidth, low-latency network fabric to support HPC or other data-intensive compute workloads
- Demonstrated experience architecting network infrastructure for health systems, payers, or healthcare SaaS platforms required, including direct (not merely exposure-level) experience in HIPAA/HITRUST-regulated environments, clinical system connectivity, and supporting customer compliance audits
Physical Demands
General office environment. May require long periods sitting and viewing a computer monitor. Moderate levels of stress may occur at times. No special physical demands required. Due to the 24x7 operations of the business, must be able to work a flexible work schedule, which may include nights, weekends, and holidays.
Travel
Occasional domestic/international travel, less than 25%.
#LI-Remote #LI-DB1
Our compensation reflects the cost of labor across several geographic markets. The compensation range for this position ranges from $165,830.00/year in our lowest geographic market up to 243,141.80 USD/year in our highest geographic market. Pay is based on a number of factors including market location and may vary depending on job-related knowledge, skills, and experience. Your recruiter can share more about the specific salary range for your preferred location during the hiring process. The compensation package may also include incentive compensation opportunities in the form of annual bonus or incentives, equity awards and an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). Learn more about benefits at Rackspace.
About Rackspace Technology
We are the multicloud solutions experts. We combine our expertise with the world’s leading technologies - across applications, data and security - to deliver end-to-end solutions. We have a proven record of advising customers based on their business challenges, designing solutions that scale, building and managing those solutions, and optimizing returns into the future. Named a best place to work, year after year according to Fortune, Forbes and Glassdoor, we attract and develop world-class talent. Join us on our mission to embrace technology, empower customers and deliver the future.
More on Rackspace Technology
Though we’re all different, Rackers thrive through our connection to a central goal: to be a valued member of a winning team on an inspiring mission. We bring our whole selves to work every day. And we embrace the notion that unique perspectives fuel innovation and enable us to best serve our customers and communities around the globe. We welcome you to apply today and want you to know that we are committed to offering equal employment opportunity without regard to age, color, disability, gender reassignment or identity or expression, genetic information, marital or civil partner status, pregnancy or maternity status, military or veteran status, nationality, ethnic or national origin, race, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or any legally protected characteristic. If you have a disability or special need that requires accommodation, please let us know.