Azure Administrator

** Azure Administrator
**** Full Time | Augusta, GA | Secret Clearance Required
** Steel Gate LLC is seeking an experienced Azure / Cloud Infrastructure Administrator to join our engineering team in Augusta, GA. In this role, you will be a primary builder and operator of Steel Gate’s secure cloud footprint, focusing on architecting, deploying, and maintaining high-assurance Azure Government (USGov / GCC High) enclaves designed to meet Department of Defense (DoD) CMMC Level 2 and NIST SP 800-171 compliance standards.

You will collaborate closely with system architects, compliance leads, and security engineering to build out compliant hosting enclaves, automate Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) deployments, implement zero-trust identity and access controls, and enforce strict continuous monitoring controls across our cloud environments.  

Key Responsibilities  
• Secure Azure Enclave Deployment:
Build, configure, and maintain isolated Azure Government (GCC High) environments, resource groups, virtual networks (VNets), and identity boundaries supporting CMMC Level 2 workloads.  
• Identity & Access Management (IAM):
Provision and manage Azure Active Directory / Microsoft Entra  (GCC High), conditional access policies, role-based access control (RBAC), multi-factor authentication (MFA), and privileged identity management (PIM).  
• Network & Boundary Security:
Configure and maintain network security groups (NSGs), Azure Firewall, Express Route/VPN tunnels, hub-and-spoke VNet peering, and web application firewalls (WAF) aligned with NIST boundary protection requirements.  
• Automation & IaC:
Develop and maintain Bicep, ARM, or Terraform templates to ensure standard, repeatable, and audited cloud infrastructure deployments.  
• NIST SP 800-171 Control Implementation:
Directly configure Azure technical controls mapping to CMMC Level 2 practices (Access Control, Identification & Authentication, Configuration Management, System & Communications Protection, System & Information Integrity).  
• Logging & Monitoring:
Implement and manage centralized log aggregation using Azure Monitor and Microsoft Sentinel (SIEM/SOAR) to ensure audit log generation, retention, and alerting.  
• Vulnerability Management & Patching:
Manage image baseline maintenance, automated OS patch management (Azure Update Manager), soft-delete/backup policies (Azure Backup / Site Recovery), and host-level endpoint hardening.  
• Artifact Generation:
Produce dynamic operational artifacts, topology diagrams, and configuration management baselines required for C3

PAO assessment evidence packages.

Required Qualifications  
• Cloud Platform Expertise: 3+ years of hands-on experience administering Microsoft Azure environments, with direct experience handling Azure Government GCC High / USGov tenant configurations.  
• Infrastructure & Security:
Demonstrated experience managing Microsoft Entra , Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), Azure Storage Security, Key Vault, and Azure Networking.  
• IaC & Scripting:
Proficiency with Power Shell, Azure CLI, and Bicep/ARM or Terraform for configuration automation.

Certifications:

• U.S. Citizenship:
Mandatory per CMMC / FedRAMP High data sovereignty requirements.  
• Microsoft Certified:
Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) or Microsoft Certified:
Cybersecurity Architect Expert (SC-100) / AZ-500.  
• DoD 8140 / 8570 Baseline Certification  
• Active DoD Secret Clearance or ability to clear a Tier 3 / NAC background investigation.

Preferred Qualifications  
• Prior experience implementing controls for NIST SP 800-171, CMMC Level 2, or FedRAMP Moderate/High.  
• Experience building virtual desktop infrastructure AVD enclaves for Secure Resource Access / Secure enclave environments.  
• Hands-on experience integrating…