Cloud Infrastructure Architect

Job Title:

Cloud Infrastructure Architect

Location:

London Job Type: Permanent

Agencies:
We will only work with recruitment partners on our preferred supplier list and will not engage with speculative CVs submitted.

Are you passionate about making life science life changing and delivering impact for patients? We want to hear from you.

Life Arc is building a secure, scalable, and modern cloud platform with Microsoft Azure at its core. As Cloud Infrastructure Architect, you will manage our cloud estate to ensure it is secure, compliant, high-performing, and cost-optimized, while providing transparent monitoring.

This role is pivotal in supporting our growing Data Science team and enabling strategic impact through robust data platform capabilities. You’ll bring deep expertise in Azure, Trusted Research Environments (TREs), and scientific compute, with experience in other cloud technologies to help shape a potential multi‑cloud ecosystem.

Reporting to the Data Platform Lead, you will play a key role in driving the evolution and execution of Life Arc’s Technology Strategy.

• Design and implement Azure-first cloud infrastructure, including networking, identity management, storage, Kubernetes, and HPC solutions, leveraging AWS experience where beneficial.
• Architect and manage secure Trusted Research Environments (TREs) that comply with governance, data management plans, and safe data principles, ensuring seamless integration with Life Arc’s Data Platform.
• Provide specialist compute solutions for bioinformatics, machine learning, and data-intensive workloads, optimizing performance and cost for scientific teams.
• Drive automation and infrastructure engineering, building repeatable deployments using Terraform, Azure Dev Ops, and CI/CD pipelines for TREs and platform components.
• Ensure alignment with Life Arc’s Data Platform strategy, embedding architectural principles and collaborating with data engineering and governance teams for seamless integration.
• Embed governance, security, and compliance standards (GDPR, ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials+) across cloud and TRE environments, implementing encryption, access controls, and audit logging.
• Implement observability and operational excellence, applying SRE principles to monitor performance, resilience, and cost optimization using Azure Monitor and related tools.
• Collaborate with stakeholders and provide technical leadership, translating scientific requirements into secure, scalable architectures and mentoring engineering teams.

• At least a HND/HNC in a computer science related field, or equivalent
• Experience as 1st/2nd line IT support specialist and providing compute support with any kind of regulated environment containing confidential/highly sensitive data
• Practical data warehouse/data lake experience
• Experience working as an architect to design and deliver changes in IT infrastructure design
• Strong hands‑on experience with Microsoft Azure across networking, compute, security, storage and automation
• Understanding of modern data/ML platforms such as Databricks, Azure ML, Synapse MLflow, Airflow etc.
• Experience working as an architect to design and deliver changes in IT infrastructure design
• Experience as a Linux support analyst/system administrator
• Understanding of data security best practices and disaster recovery planning
• Experience in cloud architecting in a life sciences, medical research or health informatics organisation
• Familiarity with data science and AI/ML approaches that the data platform infrastructure and environments
• Experience contributing to data sharing agreements and Data Protection Impact Assessments
• Practical experience with Snowflake
• Proficient with Terraform or Bicep/ARM
• Qualified as Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ‑305), Azure Security Engineer (AZ‑500), AWS Solutions Architect, Kubernetes certifications (CKA/CKS)
• CISSP, CCSP, ISO
  27001 certifications

• Collaboration and matrix working – engages with multiple teams and stakeholders to align goals and manage interdependencies.
• Dec…