Lead Azure Platform Engineer

Role: Lead Azure Platform Engineer

Duration: 6 Months

Location: UK Remote - occasional meetings to attend in London

Day Rate: £585 Inside IR35

Role Overview Active SC clearance required due to project restrictions We are seeking an experienced Azure Platform Engineering Lead to provide technical leadership for a high-performing Agile delivery team responsible for designing, building, automating and supporting secure cloud infrastructure within Microsoft Azure.

The successful candidate will retain strong hands-on platform engineering capability while setting technical direction, planning and coordinating the team's work, assuring delivery quality, and supporting project governance. The role leads the development and maintenance of cloud platforms, Infrastructure as Code, deployment pipelines and secure, scalable solutions using modern DevOps practices.

Working with Architects, Developers, DevOps Engineers, Product Owners, Scrum Masters and delivery stakeholders, the Lead will translate priorities and approved architecture into an achievable engineering plan; direct sprint delivery; approve completed work; manage risks and dependencies; and ensure decisions and designs are documented and governed.

Leadership And Governance Accountabilities

• Provide day-to-day technical leadership and direction, assigning work according to priorities, capabilities, dependencies and the project plan.
• Plan platform engineering activity across sprints and delivery increments; ensure the backlog is technically ready, sequenced and aligned to milestones.
• Direct sprint planning, refinement, delivery, review and retrospectives; remove blockers and escalate constraints.
• Review and approve work against acceptance criteria, engineering standards, security controls and documentation requirements.
• Maintain platform engineering items in the RAID log with owners, impacts, mitigations, target dates and escalation routes.
• Support the project plan with estimates, sequencing, dependencies, progress updates and forecasts.
• Record material technical and delivery decisions in the decision log.
• Provide governance reporting on delivery status, quality, risks, dependencies, decisions and actions.

Architecture And Design Responsibilities

• Liaise with Architecture to understand, challenge where appropriate, and implement the approved HLD.
• Keep solutions traceable to the HLD, security principles and project standards.
• Produce, coordinate and approve LLDs covering implementation, interfaces, networking, access controls, deployment, monitoring, support and operations.
• Identify design gaps, ambiguities or deviations early and obtain approval before implementation.
• Capture architecture decisions, exceptions and deviations in logs, plans and technical documentation.

Technical Requirements

• Strong Azure platform experience: Databricks, Azure Functions, IAM/RBAC, Storage Accounts, Networking, Virtual Machines, Key Vault, Monitoring and Alerting.
• Infrastructure as Code using Terraform.
• Azure DevOps Pipelines and CI/CD implementation.
• Azure DevOps Repos/Git and branching strategies.
• Docker and Docker Compose.
• Security and vulnerability scanning using Trivy or similar.
• Bash and/or Python scripting and automation.
• Azure networking: VNets, NSGs, Private Endpoints and DNS.
• Monitoring and troubleshooting Azure environments.
• Experience in highly regulated/secure environments, including solutions without Internet access.
• Agile/Scrum delivery experience.
• Fluent written and spoken English.

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