Cloud Operations Engineer

The Cloud Operations Engineer is responsible for ensuring the reliability scalability security and performance of our Microsoft Azure Microsoft 365 and hybrid cloud this role you will move past manual configurations to treat infrastructure as code build automated operations pipelines and establish proactive monitoring frameworks. You will partner with cybersecurity infrastructure and business teams to maintain highly available cloud systems while enforcing strict federal compliance standards.

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Author test and deploy Azure resources using Terraform Azure Bicep or ARM templates to ensure consistent and repeatable environments.
• Operations Automation: Eliminate manual tasks by writing robust automation scripts utilizing PowerShell Azure CLI or Python.
• Configuration Management: Implement and maintain automated tooling to ensure configuration consistency across all virtual machines and services.
• FinOps & Cost Optimization: Actively track analyze and optimize cloud spend using Azure Cost Management Azure Advisor and resource scheduling.

• Advanced Networking: Configure and maintain secure high-availability hybrid networks including VNets Hub-Spoke topologies Azure Firewall ExpressRoute and VPN Gateways.
• Observability & Alerting: Design and manage proactive monitoring dashboards centralized logging and automated alerting utilizing Azure Monitor Log Analytics and KQL (Kusto Query Language).
• Cloud Governance: Define and enforce compliance boundaries across all subscriptions using Azure Policy and Blueprints.
• Identity & Access Management: Manage Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) architecture ensuring secure access via advanced Conditional Access Policies PIM and Single Sign-On (SSO).

• Framework Compliance: Operationalize and maintain security controls to satisfy CMMC Level 2 NIST SP 800-171 and FedRAMP frameworks.
• Vulnerability & Incident Response: Review and triage alerts within Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Microsoft Sentinel executing automated or manual remediation workflows.
• Disaster Recovery Operations: Design document and continuously test automated backup validation and failover pipelines utilizing Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery (ASR).

• Tier III Escalation: Act as the highest internal technical escalation point for complex cloud infrastructure networking and enterprise application failures.
• End-User Computing: Oversee and scale enterprise deployments of Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) Microsoft Intune (Endpoint Manager) and Exchange Online.

• Cloud Operations: 3 years of direct experience engineering provisioning and maintaining enterprise Microsoft Azure environments.
• Systems Engineering: 5 years of overall experience in IT infrastructure networking or systems engineering.
• Automation & Scripting: Demonstrated ability to build production-grade automation using PowerShell Bash or Python.
• Modern Deployment: Direct hands-on experience deploying cloud resources via IaC frameworks (Terraform Bicep or ARM).
• Cloud Networking: Strong proficiency in cloud routing network security groups (NSGs) firewalls and hybrid site-to-site connectivity.
• Security Mindset: Practical experience executing zero-trust methodologies and enforcing the Principle of Least Privilege.

• Education: Bachelors degree in Computer Science Information Technology Cybersecurity or equivalent practical experience.
• Industry Context: Prior experience supporting IT operations within highly regulated environments such as aerospace defense or manufacturing.
• CI/CD Pipelines: Exposure to Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions for automated deployment pipelines.

• Microsoft Certified: Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104) (Highly Preferred)
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500)
• Microsoft 365 Certified: Administrator Expert (MS-102)
• CompTIA Security or CISSP