Storage Architect

Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) is a leading provider of integrated technology and services to the mortgage industry. LPS offers solutions that span the mortgage continuum, including lead generation, origination, servicing, portfolio retention and default, augmented by the company's award- winning customer support and professional services.  We seek a Storage Architect for our Mendota Heights, Minnesota office to plan, design, and analyze the organization’s storage infrastructure according to best practices, while ensuring high levels of data quality and availability. This individual will develop, implement, and oversee policies and procedures to ensure consistent storage provisioning, uptime, regulatory compliance and data protection. The Storage Architect is also responsible for capacity planning, backup and restore process design, performance analysis, and developing data disaster recovery plans.

Responsibilities:

Strategy & Planning
•Lead the development of long-term vision, strategy, and roadmaps for storage servers and databases across the organization in conjunction with company objectives.
•Work closely with operations, project management, application development, network security and database administrators to develop scaleable, maintainable, consistent, highly available storage architectures that meet business objectives and set relevant service-level agreements.
•Perform capacity planning analysis and other needs assessments to inform storage architecture strategy.
•Establish strategies for storage consolidation, centralization, and optimization to reduce downtime and costs while improving security, storage performance and data protection.
•Design redundant systems and policies for disaster recovery and archiving to ensure effective protection and integrity of storage appliances and stored data assets.
•Develop procedures for backups and restores, as well as monitor the performance, success, or failure of these tasks.
•Define, communicate, and ensure adherence to data storage retention policies and create routines for end-users to facilitate storage best practices, including desktop storage administration.
•Develop and maintain procedures for storage change management, availability management, backup management, incident management, and process documentation.
•Develop and maintain testing process for current, new, and modified storage appliances and software.
•Maintain current knowledge of storage-related laws, trends, and issues, including current and emerging technologies and best practices. Develop strategies and policies to ensure best-practice based regulatory compliance and reduce the enterprise’s legal exposure.
•Justify expenditures on storage solutions through business cases, and ROI/TCO calculations.

Acquisition & Deployment
•Assist in the purchase, installation, and configuration of new and existing storage devices and corresponding software.
•Oversee storage allocation to business units across the enterprise based on established requirements, available disk space, and future growth.

Operational Management
•Ensure IT adherence to service level agreements regarding storage allocations, limitations, and availability.
•Anticipate, identify, and oversee mitigation and response to storage access problems, retrieval issues, and storage device status issues.
•Ensure that information storage and retention measures and equipment adhere to all applicable laws and regulations. Recommend and implement changes where necessary.
•Analyze storage systems performance, collect information, and prepare summary reports.
•Manage and/or provide guidance to junior members of the team.
•Participate in on-call 3rd level support rotation.

Education & Certification:
•College diploma or university degree in the field of computer science or engineering and 5 years experience in related field, SAN admin experience a must.
•SNIA and other SAN-related certifications preferred.

Knowledge & Experience:
•In-depth understanding of storage architecture design techniques, theories, principles, and practices.
•Solid experience architecting enterprise storage, archival/backup, and DRP systems with a broad spectrum of storage technologies.
•Excellent knowledge of [SAN, NAS, DAS, RAID, SCSI, FCP, tape, clustering, encryption, content-addressable storage technologies from vendors such as Xiotech, Network Appliance, IBM, QLogic, Brocade and Quantum.
•Knowledge of change management systems, such as Serena.
•Project management/project lifecycle experience.
•Team management experience.
•Solid skills in Windows 20002003 operating systems.
•Familiar with LAN, WAN and Internet standards.
•Desired experience in developing and submitting storage audits and compliance reports to governing bodies, legal entities, and/or other external authorities.
•Knowledge of applicable data retention practices and laws.
•Good understanding of the organization’s goals and objectives.

Personal Attributes:
•Proven analytical, strategic vision drawing on strong problem-solving abilities.
•Able to prioritize and execute tasks in a high-pressure environment.
•Strong written, oral, and interpersonal communication skills.
•Ability to present ideas in business-friendly and user-friendly language appropriate to both executive and managerial audiences.
•Ability to conduct research into storage issues, standards, and products.
•Highly self motivated and directed.
•Keen attention to detail.
•Skilled in working within a team-oriented, collaborative environment.

Work Conditions:
•40-hour on-site work-week with 3rd level on-call availability for 7-10 days per month.
•10% travel a possibility.
•Sitting for extended periods of time.
•Dexterity of hands and fingers to operate a computer keyboard, mouse, and to handle other computer components.
•Lifting and transporting of moderately heavy objects, such as computers and peripherals.

 

If you are looking for an opportunity to join an exciting company and to become part of a winning team that is on the cutting edge of technology, we encourage you to apply today! 

 

Lender Processing Services offers an excellent benefit package which includes: Medical, Dental, Vision, Life Insurance, Supplemental Life Insurance, Supplemental Dependant Life Insurance, AD&D, Short and Long Term Disability, Matching 401K, Matching ESPP, Medical and Dependant Care Flexible Spending Account and EAP.  Please submit resumes to jeni.keopithoune@fnis.com or apply online at www.lpsvcs.com.  EEO/AA Employer