Principal Consultant

We are seeking a Senior Azure Platform Consultant to own and govern the enterprise Azure platform, spanning platform design, service provisioning, automation, operations, Fin Ops‑led cost governance, CI/CD enablement, performance, security assurance, and regulatory compliance. This role defines how Azure is designed, consumed, secured, and operated at scale, acting as the central platform authority while coordinating with Cloud Infrastructure (CIS), Network, Security, and Data Platform architects.

The focus is on delivering a secure, performant, cost‑transparent, and compliant Azure platform for high‑scale and regulated digital environments.

• Own the end‑to‑end Azure platform architecture, including landing zones, subscription models, shared services, connectivity, and PaaS foundations.
• Define and enforce enterprise standards for subscriptions, resource hierarchies, tagging, naming, RBAC, networking, and Azure Policy.
• Act as design authority for platform‑level decisions, aligned with the Azure Well‑Architected Framework.

• Define standardized, self‑service Azure platform services for application and data teams.
• Lead Infrastructure as Code and platform automation using Terraform, Bicep, or ARM, with reusable blueprints and reference implementations.
• Ensure all platform services are secure by design, zero‑trust aligned, and consistently deployed across environments.

• Define and govern CI/CD standards and reference pipelines for platform and infrastructure deployments using Azure Dev Ops and/or Git Hub Actions.
• Embed Dev Sec Ops  practices into platform pipelines, including policy as code, secrets management, security scanning, and automated compliance checks.
• Enable safe and repeatable deployment patterns (e.g., blue/green, rolling upgrades) for shared platform components.
• Partner with engineering teams to ensure CI/CD pipelines align with platform guardrails, security controls, and cost governance.

• Own the Azure Fin Ops strategy, embedding cost management into platform architecture, service design, and delivery processes.
• Define and enforce mandatory tagging, cost allocation (show‑back/chargeback), budgets, alerts, and forecasting models.
• Establish cost monitoring and usage transparency dashboards for platform, product, and delivery teams.
• Drive architectural and operational decisions that optimise cost to performance, scalability, and resilience.
• Act as the primary interface between platform, operations, and finance stakeholders on cloud cost accountability.

• Define platform‑level performance and scalability guardrails for compute, storage, networking, and PaaS services.
• Lead investigation of performance bottlenecks, capacity constraints, and scaling limits at the platform layer.
• Support complex root‑cause analysis in collaboration with application, data, and infrastructure teams.
• Ensure proactive monitoring, telemetry, and alerting are embedded into the platform by default.

• Embed security by design and zero‑trust principles across all platform components.
• Support and lead security audits, assurance reviews, penetration testing, and vulnerability assessments.
• Ensure platform alignment with UK regulated industry requirements, including:
• NCSC Cloud Security Principles
• Cyber Essentials (CE) and Cyber Essentials Plus (CE+)
• UK GDPR, covering data protection, access control, auditability, and data residency
• Ensure the platform is audit ready by design, with clear evidence, logging, and policy as code controls.

• Coordinate closely with CIS/Infrastructure, Security, Network, and Data Platform architects to ensure aligned designs and shared guardrails.
• Lead architecture reviews, governance forums, and Azure platform roadmap discussions.
• Mentor senior engineers and architects, raising overall cloud and platform maturity.

• Strong working experience in infrastructure/cloud engineering, with proven experience owning or leading Azure platforms at…