Principal Digital Specialist; Cloud Architect

As Cloud Architect, you’ll lead the cloud hosting architecture for Scottish Water’s transition journey, from assessing application hosting needs, to defining landing zone patterns, to specifying Azure services for networking, identity, security, monitoring, backup, disaster recovery and platform services. You’ll help teams choose the right approach: rehost, replatform, refactor or rebuild, balancing delivery pace with long-term sustainability and operational excellence. This role is ideal for an experienced infrastructure or cloud architect who can translate hosting requirements into clear, deployable Azure architectures, standards and implementation guidance.

You will define Azure hosting architectures for core systems by producing reference architectures for IaaS hosting, including virtual machines, storage, connectivity, backup, disaster recovery, patching and monitoring. You will define when IaaS is the right fit versus PaaS, ensuring hosting decisions are secure, resilient, supportable and cost‑effective. You will design cloud networking and connectivity patterns by specifying designs for hub‑and‑spoke networking, routing, firewalling, private endpoints, DNS and hybrid connectivity.

Working with Networks, Platforms and Cyber Security teams, you will ensure Azure connectivity patterns are practical, secure and maintainable. A key part of the role will be enabling cloud‑native delivery through PaaS patterns. You will define standard patterns using services such as App Service, Functions, API Management, Service Bus, Event Grid, Key Vault, managed databases and secure integration services.

You will also create golden paths, reusable templates and platform standards so delivery teams can build consistent cloud solutions faster. You will govern and assure cloud designs across programmes by providing architectural assurance for project designs and ensuring alignment with Scottish Water standards for security, resilience, supportability and cost management. Working closely with Cyber Security, you will help embed controls for identity, logging, threat detection, encryption, secrets management and vulnerability management.

You will turn requirements into clear architecture outputs, including standards, patterns, high‑level designs and implementation guidance. Collaboration and influencing will be central to the role. You will document as‑is and to‑be architectures for change programmes to support delivery alignment, partner engagement and governance. Partnering with Platforms, Enterprise Architecture, Networks, Cyber Security and delivery teams, you will help remove blockers and get designs implemented pragmatically.

You will also engage vendors and partners where needed, ensuring designs are achievable, maintainable and aligned to Scottish Water’s long‑term platform direction.

We're looking for someone with strong experience designing Azure infrastructure for business‑critical workloads and a solid grounding in IaaS architecture, including compute, storage, networking, identity, backup and disaster recovery. You will have a good understanding of cloud security fundamentals, including identity and access, network segmentation, encryption, logging, monitoring and vulnerability management. You'll be able to translate business and technical requirements into clear architecture outputs, standards, patterns and implementation guidance.

You will be confident influencing both technical and non‑technical stakeholders, with the judgement to balance delivery pace, operational risk and long‑term platform sustainability. Above all, you'll bring a pragmatic, collaborative mindset and the ability to work effectively with internal teams, delivery…