Freelance Infrastructure and network Architect

Context

Agile Production Services (APS) has the mission to deliver and maintain critical infrastructure services for BNP Paribas. Our scope includes hosting a diverse portfolio of technologies, with a primary focus on web infrastructure and applications.
The tribe’s responsibilities span:

• Technical architecture: Designing scalable and resilient solutions.

• Industrialization: Standardizing web infrastructure and security assets.

• Production support: Ensuring 24/7 operational stability.

• Integration & security: Deploying and securing web applications in alignment with bank-wide standards.

The key objective of this vacancy is to support the Technical Design team in:

·    Conducting deep-dive analysis of application flows, performance bottlenecks, and incident root causes to ensure system reliability and efficiency.

·    Creating and maintaining technical architectural designs for new or evolving workflows (OPAD & DTD's)

·    Translating business requirements into robust, future-proof solutions.

·    Collaborating with cross-functional teams (e.g., Security, DevOps) to ensure seamless implementation.

Function Description

Role: Technical Infrastructure Architect (Technical Design Squad)
Key Responsibilities:

• Architectural Expertise & Project Support:

  • Provide Web Hosting and Web Security architectural expertise to projects, delivering specific artifacts to define and implement optimal architecture choices aligned with business objectives.

  • Develop and own Detailed Technical Design (DTD) documents for new or updated projects, focusing on web infrastructure. This includes:

    • Expanding on Operational Process Architecture Documents (OPAD) provided by the Enterprise Architecture team.

    • Clarifying detailed workflows, integration points, and technical dependencies.

    • Analyzing end-to-end application flows to identify inefficiencies, bottlenecks, or failure points.

    • Incorporating performance metrics and scalability considerations into designs.

• Incident & Performance Analysis

  • Lead technical investigations into production incidents, using tools like logs, traces, and APM data to isolate root causes in application flows.

  • Conduct performance benchmarking and capacity planning for WebSphere and cloud (IaaS/PaaS) environments.

  • Document findings and recommend architectural improvements to prevent recurrence.

• Collaboration & Validation:

  • Lead incident analysis sessions to pinpoint flow disruptions, latency issues, or component failures, proposing corrective actions.

  • Partner with project architects, infrastructure engineers, and development teams to review and validate DTDs, ensuring technical feasibility and adherence to standards.

  • Facilitate understanding of architectural documents (e.g., DTDs, OPADs) across stakeholders, acting as a subject-matter expert for technical queries.

• Reference Architectures & Best Practices:

  • Contribute to the definition, maintenance, and evolution of reference architectures for web infrastructure, promoting consistency and reusability.

  • Develop and share best practices for performance tuning, flow optimization, and incident troubleshooting (e.g., log analysis, APM tooling).

  • Advocate for structured approaches in project delivery and smaller requests, providing guidance to peers and counterparts to ensure alignment with architectural principles.

• End-to-End Solution Ownership:

  • Deliver an end-to-end view of solutions, offering deep technical expertise in collaboration with other domain experts (e.g., Security, Network, DevOps).

  • Proactively monitor application performance and flow health, identifying risks before they impact operations.

  • Guide the management of the deployed solution landscape, identifying opportunities for optimization, consolidation, or decommissioning.

• Cost & Efficiency Optimization:

  • Proactively identify savings opportunities (e.g., resource right-sizing, license optimization) and propose actionable, realistic recommendations.

  • Assess decommissioning candidates (e.g., legacy systems, redundant components) and drive their retirement through structured plans.

Start Date ASAP - Start date 12/10/2026 - End date  08/10/2027

Duration 1 year  (extendable)

Location Brussels
 

Education Master or equivalent by experience.

Certification none required. e.g. TOGAF, ITIL, Agile, … are an asset

Languages Requirement

Dutch fluent

French and/or Dutch is a plus 

English Fluent

Required knowledge / Experience

Experience

At least 5 years of relevant experience.

Technical Experience

Mandatory

Experience in infrastructure architecture in enterprise environments, have a broad knowledge on following assets: Web Application Hosting (WebSphere, Kubernetes, IIS, Tomcat,, HTTP), Web Security (ISVA, F5 WAF, API GW, HSM, oAuth2, TLS, …)
Experience in cloud environments.

Preferable

Solid technical background in at least two of our assets

Business Experience

Mandatory

Able to understand bank related business processes and assess impacts on business, Agile methodology

Soft skills

·     Team player

·     Quick self-starter, pro-active attitude

·     Good Communication and Influencing skills

·     Good analytical and synthesis skills

·     Autonomy, commitment and perseverance

·     Ability to work in a dynamic and multi-cultural environment

·     follows the Customer processes for projects, 

·     being standalone and team worker,

·     meet commitment,

·     flexible, 

·     customer-oriented,

·     risk awareness,

·     ability to work in a fast-paced environment and flexibility to accommodate demanding projects schedules, 

·     strong interpersonal and communication skills (written and oral)

·     ability to work effectively with a wide range of constituencies in a diverse community