Platform Engineer

• Role Title: Azure Platform Engineering Consultant
• Location: Newbury Office – Hybrid
• Compensation: £65K – £85K (Full-Time Permanent)
• Experience Required: 10+ Years

Role Purpose

To provide hands-on Azure platform engineering expertise to accelerate the delivery of their cloud initiative (Telco-as-a-Service on Azure) platform capabilities. The role will be embedded within the company’s engineering teams to co-deliver reusable, production-ready platform components, Infrastructure as Code (IaC), CI/CD automation, observability, resilience, and FinOps practices aligned to the client's backlog and sprint cadence.

The role will support secure, scalable, and cost-effective cloud services while enabling knowledge transfer and coaching so internal engineers can increasingly develop, operate, and evolve the platform independently. Architectural ownership, design authority, programme governance, and delivery management remain with the company under separate governance arrangements.

Key Accountabilities and Decision Ownership

• Engineering Support: Provide hands-on engineering support to design, build, and optimise cloud platform capabilities, ensuring delivered components are secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned to corporate engineering standards.
• Infrastructure as Code: Develop and maintain production-ready IaC using Terraform, Terragrunt, and Azure-native tooling, enabling repeatable, automated, and governed cloud provisioning.
• Reusable Templates: Build and refine reusable Azure platform templates and engineering patterns that can be adopted consistently across workloads and environments.
• CI/CD & Automation: Implement and improve CI/CD pipelines, deployment automation, environment management, and release practices for key platform services.
• Operational Excellence: Embed observability, monitoring, resilience, security, and FinOps practices into platform components to improve reliability, cost transparency, and operational readiness.
• Agile Contribution: Actively contribute to the engineering backlog, sprint planning, refinement, delivery execution, reviews, and technical demos in line with agreed priorities.
• Coaching & Upskilling: Coach and pair with internal engineers through day-to-day co-delivery, documentation, and knowledge transfer, supporting increased internal capability to operate and extend the platform.
• Governance Alignment: Provide engineering input to architecture, security, and operations discussions while recognising that architectural ownership, design authority, and governance decisions remain with the client's relevant governance forums.

Core Competencies, Knowledge, and Experience

• Azure Expertise: Strong hands-on experience with Microsoft Azure services, including compute, networking, storage, identity, security, monitoring, and platform services.
• IaC Proficiency: Proven experience delivering cloud infrastructure using Infrastructure as Code (preferably Terraform and Terragrunt) with a strong understanding of modular, reusable, and policy-driven implementation patterns.
• Template Design: Experience building reusable Azure platform templates, "golden paths," or engineering patterns for repeatable platform adoption.
• DevSecOps Practices: Good understanding of DevOps and DevSecOps practices, including CI/CD, source control, automated testing, release management, security controls, and environment governance.
• SRE & Monitoring: Experience operating Azure cloud-native services using observability, alerting, logging, performance monitoring, service reliability, and incident response practices.
• FinOps Knowledge: Practical knowledge of cloud cost optimisation and FinOps principles, including cost visibility, tagging, right-sizing, and efficient consumption patterns.
• Consulting Skills: Ability to work effectively as an embedded third-party engineering consultant in a complex enterprise environment, communicating clearly with technical and non-technical stakeholders and producing high-quality documentation.

Expected Deliverables

• Production-ready Infrastructure as Code assets and reusable Azure platform templates.
• CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation for agreed platform services.
• Observability, monitoring, resilience, and FinOps integrations embedded into delivered components.
• Technical documentation, engineering patterns, and knowledge-transfer materials to support internal engineering adoption.
• Regular progress input to sprint reviews, weekly checkpoints, and prioritisation discussions.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

• Delivery of agreed platform outcomes to time, quality, security, and compliance expectations.
• Production-ready IaC modules, reusable Azure platform templates, and CI/CD pipelines delivered against prioritised backlog items.
• Reduction in manual effort and operational toil through automation, reusable patterns, and improved engineering practices.
• Improved reliability, performance, observability, resilience, and operational readiness of the cloud platform.
• Improved cost transparency and optimisation through consistent FinOps practices embedded into platform components.
• Evidence of effective knowledge transfer, including documented patterns, pairing sessions, coaching outputs, and increased ability of internal engineers to maintain delivered components independently.

Critical Success Factors

• Strong Azure platform engineering expertise and the ability to deliver production-ready outcomes with minimal supervision.
• A practical problem-solving mindset with a focus on secure, scalable, resilient, and maintainable solutions.
• Ability to work effectively in an embedded co-delivery model, aligned to client backlog priorities, sprint cadence, and local working hours.
• Strong collaboration skills across platform engineering, architecture, security, operations, and delivery teams, with a clear understanding of scope boundaries and governance responsibilities.
• Clear communication, documentation, coaching, and knowledge-transfer capability.
• Ability to perform effectively under pressure and support incident, operational, or delivery priorities when required.
• Commitment to continuous improvement, automation, cost optimisation, FinOps, and engineering excellence.

Apply directly or reach out to me at georgeneville@morganmckinley for more information.