Azure Devops SME

Azure DevOps Subject Matter Expert (SME)

Role Summary: The Azure DevOps SME is a role responsible for defining, governing, and advancing enterprise Azure DevOps practices. The role combines hands-on engineering depth with strategic leadership across CI/CD, Infrastructure as Code, DevSecOps, platform engineering, automation, observability, SRE, and enterprise cloud transformation. This is not a general DevOps Engineer position; it is a technical authority role expected to set standards, mentor teams, and drive measurable modernization outcomes.

Key Responsibilities

• Design enterprise-grade DevOps architectures for Azure cloud, hybrid, and application delivery platforms.
• Create and govern standards for Azure Repos, Azure Pipelines, Azure Boards, GitHub Enterprise, GitHub Actions, branching, releases, artifacts, and environments.
• Lead automation for infrastructure provisioning, configuration, application deployment, release orchestration, and cloud operations.
• Drive CI/CD adoption across multiple teams by delivering reusable pipeline templates, deployment patterns, and engineering playbooks.
• Champion Infrastructure as Code using Terraform, Bicep, and ARM Templates with secure, modular, reusable designs.
• Embed DevSecOps controls such as policy as code, vulnerability checks, RBAC, secrets management, audit readiness, and compliance automation.
• Enable Docker and AKS delivery patterns, including container security, Kubernetes operations, and scalable deployment models.
• Lead platform engineering initiatives that improve developer self-service, deployment consistency, reliability, and productivity.
• Apply SRE practices to improve availability, resilience, monitoring, alerting, recovery, and operational excellence.
• Mentor engineers, provide SME guidance, lead architecture reviews, and partner with Security, Architecture, Development, Operations, and Product teams.
• Identify improvements to deployment speed, release quality, platform reliability, security posture, and cloud cost efficiency.

Technical Skills Required

• Azure DevOps Services: Azure Repos, Azure Pipelines, Azure Boards, Azure Artifacts, YAML pipelines, approvals, environments, release controls, and governance.
• Azure Cloud Platform: compute, networking, identity, RBAC, governance, security, monitoring, management, and enterprise landing zone patterns.
• CI/CD design: pipeline architecture, optimization, artifact flow, release automation, environment promotion, blue-green/canary/rolling deployment patterns.
• IaC and automation: Terraform, Bicep, ARM Templates, Ansible, PowerShell, Bash, reusable modules, and configuration management practices.
• GitHub Enterprise: repository governance, GitHub Actions, enterprise collaboration models, code security, and workflow automation.
• Containers and Kubernetes: Docker, AKS, Kubernetes administration concepts, container security, and cloud-native deployment practices.
• Security and observability: DevSecOps, secure SDLC, policy enforcement, secrets management, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, OpenTelemetry, Grafana, Splunk, Datadog, Dynatrace, or equivalent tools.
• Delivery practices: Agile, Scrum, backlog management, release governance, change management, incident/problem management, and operational readiness.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with enterprise cloud migration, modernization, platform engineering, and internal developer platforms.
• FinOps awareness and ability to reduce operating cost through automation, standardization, and platform optimization.
• Experience in large, regulated, global environments requiring strong governance, auditability, security, and compliance.
• Exposure to AI-assisted engineering, API management, multi-cloud, hybrid-cloud, or advanced observability practices.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related discipline; Master’s degree preferred.
• 10+ years of experience in IT Infrastructure, Cloud Engineering, Platform Engineering, or DevOps.
• 5+ years of hands-on Azure DevOps Services experience in enterprise environments.
• Proven success leading cloud transformation, CI/CD modernization, IaC adoption, or large-scale automation programs.
• Demonstrated ability to operate as a senior SME, technical advisor, architect, mentor, and engineering change leader.

Leadership & Collaboration Expectations

• Influence enterprise engineering direction and translate business, security, compliance, and operational needs into scalable DevOps solutions.
• Lead technical workshops, architecture reviews, communities of practice, standards adoption, and cross-team enablement.
• Communicate clearly with engineers, architects, security teams, senior leaders, vendors, and stakeholders.
• Promote engineering excellence through documentation, reusable assets, coaching, measurable outcomes, and continuous improvement.

Success Metrics

• Increased CI/CD adoption, deployment frequency, release success rate, automation maturity, and Infrastructure as Code coverage.
• Reduced deployment lead time, manual effort, change failure rate, mean time to recovery, and avoidable cloud operating cost.
• Improved platform reliability, developer productivity, security control adherence, compliance posture, and audit readiness.
• Successful adoption of platform engineering, DevSecOps, SRE, reusable patterns, and self-service delivery capabilities.

Nice-to-Have Certifications

• Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Engineer Expert
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) or CKAD
• Relevant security, Agile, Scrum, SAFe, or cloud governance certifications