About the role:
This is an exciting opportunity for a forward-thinking and innovative cloud engineering lead to join ROCK. The Principal Cloud & AI Engineer is a highly technical, hands-on role that provides both deep engineering expertise and architectural guidance as we embark on scaling our AWS and Azure services portfolio. The role requires leadership qualities to be able to coordinate and mentor engineers and delivery partners within the team.
This individual will be directly responsible for designing, building, and optimising scalable, secure, and resilient cloud solutions. The role also offers the successful candidate to take a leading role in the definition and implementation of tooling, CI/CD pipelines operational processes, automation, and security practices to ensure ROCK’s cloud deployments are robust, efficient, and financially well-managed.
Alongside daily engineering responsibilities, the Principal Cloud Engineer will shape technical best practices, drive continuous improvement, and mentor engineers, fostering a culture focused on growth, learning, and innovation that supports ROCK’s ambition to become an AWS Premier Partner. The role is instrumental in building and scaling the professional services and the operational cloud team, supporting the evolution from a single customer pod model to multiple delivery teams.
A flavour of what you will be doing:
Technical Solution Leadership
* Provide hands-on leadership in designing, prototyping, deploying scalable solutions and PoCs across AWS, and ideally Azure.
* Lead modernisation and migration of complex workloads, particularly Windows environments, to modern cloud platforms.
* Architect secure, scalable, and cost-optimised cloud-native environments aligned with well-architected principles.
* Act as technical SME, supporting presales initiatives and aligning technical solutions with client business goals.
* Serve as technical design authority for AWS, guiding team architectural standards and decision making.
* Support the delivery of AI/ML and Gen AI proof of concepts, leveraging cloud-native services.
Cloud Strategy, Automation & Governance
* Develop and refine cloud landing zones, infrastructure-as-code, and automation strategies across cloud platforms.
* Lead the design and standardisation of CI/CD pipelines and GitOps practices across teams.
* Support the review of migration readiness and modernisation assessments, using frameworks such as 7Rs.
* Standardise tooling, and governance to improve technical efficiency and consistency across teams.
* Stay current with and integrate emerging technologies (AI, ML, serverless) to maintain technical edge.
People Leadership & Team Development
* Provide technical mentoring for cloud excellence, focusing on best practices, CI/CD and operational excellence.
* Foster continuous learning through knowledge sharing, peer mentoring, and structured training.
* Drive adoption of standardised operating procedures while encouraging innovation and improvement.
What we need:
* Proven experience in implementing and designing cloud solutions in AWS (currently holds or is willing to pass AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional or DevOps Engineer Professional).
* Must have experience in Windows migration to AWS, Workspaces and monitoring and security services.
* Extensive experience with landing zone development using Terraform IaC, CI/CD and git and GitOps.
* Providing technical delivery experience and leadership through large complex projects and migrations.
* Significant expertise in building AWS solutions, Azure experience, preferable but not essential.
* Background in hybrid / on-premises integration (VMware, networking, storage)
* Experience in supporting Cloud Operations / managed services.
* Experience in delivering AI/ML and gen AI PoC’s advantageous.
The ideal candidate:
* Exemplary background in designing in AWS with AWS Pro certification. Azure certifications are also advantageous.
* Continuous innovator, ability to support the success and implementation of new services and repeatable packaged solutions.
* Strong leadership and communications skills with the ability to inspire.
* Deep understanding of cloud operations frameworks, including well architected.
* Exceptional communication skills for engaging both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders.
This is an truly exciting opportunity as mentioned, to work across multiple projects and help define tooling as part of a fully remote and growing team.
If interested, please apply or reach out to Jack directly!