Azure Cloud Engineer – Preston/ Hybrid – 6 Month Contract About Your Role: The Azure Cloud Engineer is responsible for building, operating, and optimising cloud infrastructure and platform services within Microsoft Azure. This role provides hands on engineering, operational support, and continuous improvement of Azure services to ensure secure, scalable, and resilient cloud delivery. The engineer works closely with architects, security teams, and application owners to implement solutions that follow best practice, automation standards, and governance controls. • Deploy, configure, and maintain Azure infrastructure across compute, network, storage, and platform services. • Implement Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for consistent and automated environment provisioning. • Apply Azure security and governance controls including RBAC, Policy, and network security rulesets. • Support the build and operation of landing zones and environment foundations. • Troubleshoot complex Azure issues and provide expert operational support. • Collaborate with architects, developers, and security teams to deliver cloud solutions. • Optimise Azure cost, performance, resilience, and observability. • Support platform services such as App Services, Azure Kubernetes Service, and serverless components. • Maintain documentation, standards, and operational knowledge bases. • Drive automation, standardisation, and engineering maturity across the cloud platform. About You: As an experienced Azure Cloud Engineer, your skills and knowledge will include; • Strong understanding of Azure core services including Compute, Storage, Networking, and Security. • Strong knowledge of Infrastructure as Code frameworks particularly Bicep. ARM templates, or Terraform an advantage. • Understanding of Azure governance models including Policy, Blueprints, Management Groups, and RBAC. • Knowledge of cloud networking concepts including routing, firewalls, private endpoints, DNS, and load balancing. • Familiarity with Azure landing zone concepts and the Cloud Adoption Framework. • Understanding of container orchestration and AKS architecture. • Knowledge of monitoring and observability practices within Azure (Monitor, Logs, Metrics). • Familiarity with CI/CD solutions and DevOps pipelines. • Understanding of identity concepts including Entra ID integration, managed identities, and service principals. • Awareness of cloud cost management, tagging standards, and usage optimisation techniques.