The Senior Azure Architect is responsible for leading the design, engineering, automation, and administration of the organisation’s Azure cloud infrastructure. This role is critical in ensuring a secure, scalable, resilient, and high-availability cloud environment while supporting DevOps initiatives and modern infrastructure best practices.

The incumbent will provide technical leadership, architect enterprise-grade solutions, and collaborate with cross-functional teams to enable reliable cloud platforms aligned with business and technology objectives.

Key Deliverables

Cloud Engineering & Automation

· Design, implement, and manage scalable, secure, and resilient Azure infrastructure solutions.

· Automate cloud operations using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools such as Terraform, ARM templates, or Bicep.

· Collaborate with DevOps teams to streamline CI/CD pipelines and integrate cloud-native services.

· Administer, optimise, and govern Azure services including Azure Active Directory, Virtual Networks, Compute, Storage, and Monitoring services.

Containerisation & DevOps

· Deploy and manage containerised applications using Docker and Kubernetes.

· Integrate cloud platforms with CI/CD tools such as Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or Jenkins.

· Implement end-to-end monitoring, logging, and alerting using Azure Monitor, Application Insights, and Log Analytics.

High Availability (HA) & Disaster Recovery (DR)

· Architect and implement high availability and disaster recovery strategies, including:

o Availability Zones and Availability Sets for virtual machine redundancy.

o Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup for workload protection.

o Geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) and multi-region deployments for mission-critical services.

o Azure Front Door or Azure Traffic Manager for global load balancing and failover routing.

· Design active-active and active-passive architectures for services such as Cosmos DB, Azure SQL Database, and App Services.

· Define, implement, and regularly test Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO).

· Maintain and routinely test a documented Disaster Recovery plan aligned with business continuity requirements.

Job Requirements

Experience

· 5–10 years of hands-on experience in Azure cloud engineering, architecture, and administration.

· Proven experience designing and supporting enterprise-scale Azure environments.

· Experience working in hybrid cloud environments with on-premises system integration.

Technical Skills

· Strong expertise in Azure IaaS and PaaS services.

· Proficiency in scripting languages such as PowerShell, Bash, or Python.

· Extensive experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Bicep, and/or ARM templates).

· Hands-on experience with containerisation and orchestration using Docker and Kubernetes.

· Solid understanding of cloud networking, identity management, and security principles.

· Experience with monitoring and observability tools including Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and exposure to Prometheus and/or Grafana.

· Experience with Microsoft Fabric in data integration and analytics workflows.

DevOps & Methodologies

· Strong familiarity with DevOps practices, CI/CD pipelines, and tooling such as Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions.

· Experience working within Agile delivery environments.

· Working knowledge of ITIL frameworks and operational best practices.

Qualifications & Certifications

· Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or a related field (or equivalent experience).

· Relevant Microsoft Azure certifications, including:

o AZ-104: Azure Administrator Associate

o AZ-305: Azure Solutions Architect Expert

o AZ-400: DevOps Engineer Expert

· Additional cloud, security, or architecture certifications will be advantageous