Principal Azure DevOps Engineer

W2 only, no C2C

Principal Azure Engineer, Platform & Delivery:

The Principal Azure Engineer, Platform & Delivery is a senior technical leader responsible for designing, building, and delivering enterprise-scale Microsoft Azure solutions. This role combines deep hands-on Azure engineering expertise with ownership of delivery outcomes, often serving as the technical lead for initiatives without dedicated project management. The ideal candidate can translate complex or ambiguous business needs into secure, scalable Azure solutions and ensure they are executed predictably and effectively.

Required Qualifications:

• Deep technical experience designing and operating high-availability, scalable infrastructure including networking, storage, virtualization, and identity.
• Developing and maintaining automated deployment modules using tools like Terraform or ARM templates.
• Optimizing delivery pipelines (e.g., Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions) to ensure repeatable, secure platform services.
• Proven experience implementing enterprise Azure networking architectures.
• Experience migrating and modernizing workloads from on-premises environments to Azure.
• Implementing governance frameworks, RBAC, and security baselines using Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Azure Policy.
• Demonstrated ability to lead engineers and influence stakeholders without formal authority.
• Experience defining and implementing monitoring and observability solutions.
• Lead end-to-end delivery of multiple concurrent Azure initiatives from intake and design through implementation and operational handoff.
• Act as the technical project lead for Azure initiatives where no formal project manager is assigned.
• Maintain visibility into all in-flight Azure work and provide regular status updates, risk reporting, and summaries.
• Coordinate work across infrastructure, security, networking, application, and vendor teams.
• Proactively identify delivery risks and blockers and drive resolution to keep initiatives moving forward.
• Balance speed, cost, risk, and compliance when making technical and delivery tradeoff decisions.
• Mentor and guide engineers, establishing technical standards, patterns, and best practices.
• Produce high-quality technical documentation, architectural artifacts, and operational runbooks.
• Foster strong partnerships with application teams to enable successful Azure adoption.

Additional Skills and Experience:

• Deep proficiency in Azure compute (VMs, AKS), storage, networking (VNETs, NSGs), and identity (Microsoft Entra ID).
• Experience operating in regulated environments such as healthcare, financial services, or higher education, including frameworks like HIPAA, HITRUST, SOC 2, or GDPR.
• Working knowledge of IT service management concepts.
• Experience with Azure Cost Management and FinOps practices.
• Strong problem investigation, root cause analysis, and decision-making skills.

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience.
• Minimum of 10 years of professional IT experience, with at least 5 years in a senior, architect-level, or principal cloud engineering role.
• Demonstrated experience leading enterprise-scale Azure initiatives with multiple parallel workstreams.