Skills needed

Legacy infrastructure experience — this is the most critical requirement. The Buck environment is a complex brownfield estate with significant legacy challenges including end-of-life operating systems (Windows Server 2008 and older Linux distributions throughout), millions of hardcoded IP addresses across Oracle and SQL Server database records, undocumented server-to-server dependencies, a single Active Directory domain spanning both prod and nonprod, and no consistent subnet-to-tier mapping.

The contractor must be comfortable navigating undocumented complexity and making sound judgment calls when discovery reveals surprises mid-delivery. This is not a greenfield build.

Legacy load balancing migration — Buck's existing load balancing architecture is legacy and not directly compatible with GCP's load balancing model. The contractor must have hands-on experience adapting legacy load balancing designs to GCP Cloud Load Balancing — specifically understanding how to map legacy constructs to GCP's external and internal load balancer model, handle split-horizon DNS and path-based routing patterns, manage SSL certificate migration, and maintain zero downtime during load balancer cutover.

Comfort with the differences between legacy on-premises load balancers and GCP's URL map and backend service model is essential.

The contractor should have practical experience leveraging AI tools to accelerate current-state understanding in legacy environments. Specifically: the ability to prompt effectively to surface undocumented requirements, identify hard architectural constraints, map dependencies from incomplete documentation, and validate assumptions against existing infrastructure.



This skill significantly compresses discovery time in environments where documentation is sparse or outdated.

GCP — hub and spoke VPC architecture, Cloud VPN, hierarchical firewall policies, IAM and org policy management. All remaining work is GCP-native.

Terraform — the entire environment is infrastructure as code. The contractor needs to be comfortable working within an existing Terraform codebase and GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline. Zero click-ops is enforced.

CI/CD and securit y — the contractor must have hands-on GitHub Actions experience including Workload Identity Federation for keyless GCP authentication. No service account keys exist anywhere in the pipeline or setting — the contractor must understand WIF, how OIDC token exchange works, and how to operate and troubleshoot pipelines built on this model.

Beyond the pipeline, the contractor must be comfortable operating in a highly regulated environment with strict compliance controls — Wiz security scanning on every branch, Wiz CSPM monitoring, CrowdStrike EDR on all workloads, and zero tolerance for manual console changes. Everything is auditable, everything is code, and every change is scrutinised. A contractor accustomed to looser environments will struggle here.

Hybrid connectivity — active IPsec VPN tunnels between on-premises and GCP require ongoing management throughout the remaining migration phases. And other VPN tunnels to various other sites for different functional requirements

HIPAA and PIPEDA — the environment operates under both frameworks. Any architectural changes require security and compliance sign-off. Must have experience in regulated environments

Migration delivery — active lift-and-shift with a hard contractual datacenter exit deadline. Experience delivering under deadline pressure in legacy environments is essential.

📌 GCP Migration Architect (Canada)
🏢 Volgo Technologies
📍 Canada