Cloud Solution Architect - Data & AI

Full Job Description

Lead architecture and technical engagements for mission-critical database workloads across Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server on Azure VMs. Assess existing customer database estates and develop migration, modernisation and optimisation strategies. Provide deep technical guidance on database performance tuning, including query performance, indexing, execution plans, resource utilisation, configuration and workload optimisation. Diagnose complex production database performance and reliability issues and provide actionable recommendations. Advise customers on database and cluster architecture, configuration, scaling, capacity planning and operational best practices. Design high availability and disaster recovery architectures aligned with customer business continuity requirements. Review and optimise database environments for performance, reliability, security and cost. Support customers with SQL Server and Azure SQL migrations, upgrades and platform modernisation. Provide technical leadership for database resiliency, backup, recovery, failover and business-critical workload scenarios. Evaluate workload requirements and recommend the appropriate Azure database deployment model. Provide architectural guidance across other Azure database technologies, including Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure Database for MySQL and Azure Cosmos DB, where required. Lead technical workshops, architecture reviews, health assessments and troubleshooting sessions with customer database, infrastructure and application teams. Work across customer application and infrastructure architectures to identify upstream or downstream dependencies affecting database performance. Help customers establish an AI-ready operational data foundation, connecting modern database platforms with emerging AI use cases where relevant. Strong expertise in database architecture, administration, optimisation and troubleshooting. Proven experience with SQL performance tuning, including query optimisation, indexing strategies, execution-plan analysis and resource bottleneck investigation. Experience diagnosing CPU, memory, I/O, locking, blocking, concurrency and database performance issues. Strong understanding of database configuration, workload management, scaling and capacity planning. Experience managing and optimising highly available or clustered database environments. Strong knowledge of high availability, disaster recovery, backup/recovery and failover architectures. Hands-on experience with SQL Server migration and modernisation to Azure. Strong understanding of Azure SQL Database, Azure SQL Managed Instance and SQL Server on Azure VMs and the architectural considerations for choosing between them. Understanding of database security, identity, networking, encryption, monitoring and operational controls. Working knowledge of PostgreSQL and other Azure database technologies is highly desirable. Understanding of Azure infrastructure, networking, storage, monitoring and security as they relate to enterprise database workloads. Ability to understand application architectures and identify how application behaviour impacts underlying database performance. Understanding of modern Data & AI architectures and how operational database platforms provide the trusted data foundation for enterprise AI workloads. AI fluency and ability to engage customers on how database modernisation supports their broader AI strategy. Proven experience leading complex technical engagements with enterprise customers. Ability to move between architecture-level discussions and deep technical troubleshooting. Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to diagnose complex production issues across application, database and infrastructure layers. Ability to translate technical findings into pragmatic architecture and operational recommendations. Strong communication, presentation and technical whiteboarding skills. Comfortable engaging with DBAs, application developers, platform engineers, enterprise architects and senior technology stakeholders. Azure Database Administrator Associate (DP-300) or equivalent demonstrated expertise. Relevant Azure architecture certifications are desirable. Experience supporting large, complex and regulated enterprise environments. Experience with mission-critical workloads requiring demanding performance, availability, scalability and recovery objectives. Experience modernising large on-premises SQL Server estates to Azure. Experience performing database health assessments, performance reviews and production optimisation. We are specifically looking for someone who can walk into a complex customer database environment and confidently answer: