The opportunity
We are continuing a significant transformation of our technology estate, moving towards a predominantly cloud-native operating model built around Microsoft Azure, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Fabric and the wider Microsoft cloud ecosystem.
The Senior Azure Platform Engineer will therefore provide broad Azure platform engineering capability while also developing sufficient depth within Microsoft Fabric and data-platform technologies to provide resilience alongside our existing Cloud & Data Engineer.
The role offers:
Significant ownership of a growing Azure environment.
Hands-on involvement with Microsoft Fabric as it becomes a core enterprise data platform.
The opportunity to shape our cloud engineering standards and practices.
Significant scope for Infrastructure as Code and automation.
Exposure to identity, networking, security, data, Microsoft 365 and Power Platform technologies.
Direct involvement in cloud architecture and technology decision-making.
The opportunity to lead technical projects rather than simply receive implementation tasks.
A modernisation programme progressively reducing reliance on legacy and on-premises infrastructure.
Close working relationships with senior IT leadership, engineers, data specialists and external technology partners.
A senior technical career path that does not require moving into people management.
Day-to-Day Responsibilities
Azure Platform Engineering
Design, implement, maintain and improve services across the Azure estate. The role is not expected to personally administer every Microsoft technology but should have sufficient breadth to understand how services interact across a modern Microsoft cloud environment.
Microsoft Fabric & Data Platform
Work alongside the existing Cloud & Data Engineer to provide engineering resilience for Microsoft Fabric. The role is not intended to replace BI developers or become responsible for business reporting and visualisation. Instead, it supports the engineering platform on which those capabilities operate.
Infrastructure as Code & Automation, Integration
Help move the organisation towards repeatable, controlled and automated infrastructure management. The engineer should actively look for opportunities to replace fragile manual processes with reliable automation.
Identity, Security & Governance
Work with IT leadership and other technology teams to ensure Azure platforms are appropriately secured and governed. The engineer will be responsible for technical implementation of security controls, working alongside governance and assurance functions rather than replacing them.
Technical Project Delivery
Take technical ownership of projects and workstreams.
Operational Engineering
Although primarily an engineering/project role, the position will also act as a senior escalation point for complex platform issues. This is not intended to be a traditional infrastructure support position, but senior engineers are expected to retain operational ownership of the platforms they build.
Technical Skills
We are particularly interested in experience across the following areas.
Azure
Azure architecture and administration.
Azure networking.
Azure identity and RBAC.
Azure Monitor and Log Analytics.
Azure Policy and governance.
Key Vault.
Private networking and Private Endpoints.
Azure security and Defender.
Azure storage and platform services.
Backup, resilience and disaster recovery concepts.
Engineering & Automation
Data Platforms
Experience with some combination of:
Microsoft Fabric.
Azure Databricks.
Azure Synapse.
Data Lake technologies.
Data pipelines and orchestration.
Notebooks.
Medallion/lakehouse architecture.
Data-platform security and identity.
Deployment and environment-management patterns.
Microsoft Cloud
Useful wider exposure includes:
