Cloud Engineering Lead (Azure) - Birmingham (Hybrid) - £850 PD

Cloud Engineering Lead (Azure) - Birmingham (2 to 3 days per week)

Azure, Terraform, AKS, GitHub, Docker etc. Infra & DevOps skills + Architecture on the same tech stack

Insurer - ideally someone with insurance experience.

Contract - 6 months / Birmingham (2 to 3 days per week in the office)

£850 per day inside IR35

My client is a leading Specialist Insurer and they are seeking an experienced and versatile Cloud Engineering Lead to step into a pivotal role for paternity leave cover.

This is a high-impact position responsible for leading my client's cloud strategy, driving modernisation efforts, and ensuring the secure, scalable, and cost-effective operation of their Azure-based infrastructure.

What You’ll Be Doing

• Lead Cloud Strategy & Execution: Own and evolve our cloud adoption and modernisation roadmap.
• Architect Scalable Infrastructure: Design and implement secure, multi-region Azure environments using Terraform.
• Champion DevOps & GitOps: Enforce CI/CD best practices, GitHub Actions pipelines, and infrastructure-as-code standards.
• Security & Compliance: Implement strong security postures using RBAC, PIM, Azure Policies, and Defender for Cloud.
• Cross-Team Collaboration: Work closely with InfoSec, networking, and platform teams to ensure seamless delivery.
• Production Troubleshooting: Resolve complex issues across infrastructure, networking, and security layers.
• FinOps & Cost Optimisation: Monitor cloud spend, implement tagging strategies, and support financial tracking.
• Team Leadership: Mentor a team of 6 engineers, lead code reviews, unblock delivery, and uphold engineering excellence.
• Stakeholder Engagement: Represent the cloud team to senior stakeholders, manage escalations, and align with business goals.
• AI/ML Enablement: Prototype and deploy AI workloads using Azure OpenAI and ML endpoints.
• Observability & Monitoring: Build dashboards and alerts using Azure Monitor, KQL, and SIEM tools

Your Experience

We’re looking for someone who’s hands-on, strategic, and deeply technical. You should be comfortable switching between architecture discussions and debugging Terraform or AKS issues.

Must-Have Skills:

• Deep expertise in Azure cloud services and architecture
• Strong Terraform skills (modular, reusable, production-grade code)
• Experience with GitHub Actions and CI/CD pipelines
• Familiarity with AKS, Azure Container Apps, and Docker
• Strong understanding of cloud security (RBAC, PIM, Key Vault, Defender, Policies)
• Experience with Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and KQL
• Proven leadership and mentoring experience in engineering teams
• Ability to troubleshoot complex infrastructure and networking issues