Azure Ops Lead Data Platform - London hybrid - Strategic & Hands-On Leadership : £90k

We're partnering with a market-leading organisation in search of an exceptional Operations Lead to take ownership of a high-performing Azure-based data platform. This is a pivotal role for a strategic yet hands-on operations professional who thrives in complex environments and enjoys making things run brilliantly.

As the single point of contact for platform operations, you'll ensure reliability, resilience, and cost-efficiency across a modern Azure ecosystem - spanning Synapse, Databricks, ADF, and Power BI. You'll lead incident response, define SLAs, drive FinOps practices, and champion automation and observability.

If you enjoy combining technical depth with operational excellence, and want to shape the future of a data platform that powers critical business insight, this could be your next challenge.

What You'll Be Doing

• Owning the day-to-day stability and performance of a cutting-edge Azure data platform.
• Acting as the primary point of contact for incidents and outages - leading resolution, root cause analysis, and stakeholder communications.
• Defining and enforcing SLAs for key pipelines, datasets, and reporting assets.
• Running FinOps forums to improve cost transparency, accountability, and platform efficiency.
• Overseeing CI/CD pipelines and deployments, ensuring safe, reliable, and compliant change delivery.
• Driving monitoring, automation, and observability initiatives to improve uptime and reduce manual intervention.
• Developing runbooks, playbooks, and escalation protocols to strengthen resilience.
• Partnering closely with data engineering and analytics teams to align operations with business goals and the broader platform roadmap.

What We're Looking For

• Proven operational leadership experience in large-scale or business-critical data environments.
• Strong skills in incident management, SLA governance, and root cause analysis.
• Hands-on experience across the Azure Data Stack (Synapse, Databricks, ADF, Power BI).
• Knowledge of automation and CI/CD practices to enhance deployment reliability.
• A FinOps mindset - comfortable managing costs, reporting usage, and running stakeholder forums.
• Experience with monitoring, alerting, and observability tools for proactive health management.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder management - able to translate technical detail into clear business impact.
• Calm, pragmatic problem solver with strong decision-making skills under pressure.

Nice to Have

• ITIL or service management background
• Familiarity with Azure Purview or data governance frameworks
• FinOps certification
• Experience in telecoms or regulated environments (e.g., GDPR)

If you're ready to take full ownership of a mission-critical Azure data platform - ensuring it performs seamlessly, scales smartly, and runs efficiently - we'd love to hear from you.