Cloud Infrastructure & Automation Engineer

Role

The Cloud Infrastructure & Automation Engineer is responsible for designing, building, automating, and supporting secure Azure cloud infrastructure for enterprise workloads. The role combines hands-on engineering across ARM Templates, YAML pipelines, Azure networking, cloud governance, monitoring, and production troubleshooting. This is not a purely operational role; it requires automation-first thinking, strong design discipline, and the ability to deliver repeatable, compliant, and supportable cloud infrastructure solutions.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, deploy, and support Azure infrastructure for cloud, hybrid, and application delivery platforms.
• Build reusable Infrastructure as Code using ARM Templates with parameterized, modular, and secure deployment patterns.
• Create and maintain YAML-based CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure validation, provisioning, approvals, and environment promotion.
• Design and troubleshoot Azure networking including Virtual Networks, subnets, NSGs, route tables, VPN/ExpressRoute, load balancers, Application Gateways, DNS, and IP addressing.
• Automate cloud operations, deployment tasks, configuration checks, and repeatable environment provisioning activities.
• Support production incidents by analyzing deployment history, effective routes, NSG rules, diagnostic logs, health probes, connectivity tests, and monitoring data.
• Apply governance controls including RBAC, Azure Policy, tagging, diagnostic settings, secure secrets handling, and compliant release practices.
• Partner with Cloud Architects, Security, DevOps, Operations, and Application teams to deliver reliable infrastructure services and technical documentation.
• Identify improvements to deployment consistency, infrastructure reliability, security posture, operational readiness, and cloud cost efficiency.

Technical Skills Required

• Azure Cloud Platform: compute, storage, identity, RBAC, governance, monitoring, diagnostic settings, and enterprise landing zone concepts.
• Infrastructure as Code: ARM Templates, template parameters, variables, outputs, dependencies, linked/nested templates, and reusable deployment patterns.
• YAML and deployment pipelines: Azure DevOps YAML pipelines, stages, jobs, approvals, service connections, variables, artifacts, and release controls.
• Cloud networking: VNets, subnets, NSGs, route tables/UDRs, TCP/IP, DNS, private IP/public IP addressing, VPN, ExpressRoute, peering, and hybrid routing.
• Traffic management: Azure Load Balancer, Application Gateway, health probes, backend pools, listeners, routing rules, SSL/TLS handling, and basic WAF concepts.
• Troubleshooting: production connectivity analysis, NSG flow validation, effective route review, DNS checks, deployment operation logs, and root cause analysis.
• Automation and scripting: PowerShell, Bash, Azure CLI, Git, pull requests, branching, code reviews, and repeatable operational scripts.
• Monitoring and operations: Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, alerts, dashboards, runbooks, incident/problem/change management, and operational documentation.

Preferred Skills

• Experience with Bicep, Terraform, GitHub Actions, Azure Firewall, Private Endpoints, AKS, or Azure Landing Zones.
• Experience designing infrastructure patterns for enterprise-scale, regulated, or globally distributed environments.
• FinOps awareness and ability to optimize infrastructure cost through automation, standardization, right-sizing, and governance.
• Exposure to platform engineering, self-service infrastructure patterns, SRE practices, observability, and secure DevOps delivery models.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related discipline; equivalent practical experience may be considered.
• 5+ years of experience in Cloud Infrastructure, Infrastructure Engineering, Platform Engineering, Network Engineering, or DevOps roles.
• 3+ years of hands-on Microsoft Azure experience supporting production or enterprise environments.
• Proven experience creating or maintaining ARM Templates and YAML pipelines for automated infrastructure deployment.
• Demonstrated ability to troubleshoot complex infrastructure, networking, deployment, access, and monitoring issues in production environments.

Leadership & Collaboration Expectations

• Translate architecture, security, compliance, and operational needs into scalable Azure infrastructure solutions.
• Participate in design reviews, infrastructure reviews, incident analysis, and operational readiness assessments.
• Communicate clearly with engineers, architects, security teams, application owners, vendors, and operational stakeholders.
• Promote engineering excellence through documentation, reusable assets, automation standards, knowledge sharing, and continuous improvement.

Success Metrics

• Increased Infrastructure as Code coverage, deployment consistency, automation maturity, and environment provisioning speed.
• Reduced manual deployment effort, change failure rate, repetitive operational tasks, and avoidable production incidents.
• Improved network reliability, monitoring coverage, alert quality, security control adherence, and audit readiness.
• Successful adoption of reusable ARM templates, governed YAML pipelines, tagging standards, diagnostics, and operational runbooks.

Nice-to-Have Certifications

• Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate
• Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Engineer Expert
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate or equivalent IaC certification
• Relevant networking, security, Agile, Scrum, ITIL, or cloud governance certifications