Azure Infra Engineer/Architect

Role: Azure Cloud Architect with Customer-facing skills

Location: McKinney, TX (Hybrid)

Duration: 6+ Months

Experience: 8-15+ years

Role type: Architecture / Platform Engineering

Role Overview

Experienced Azure Cloud / Platform Architect responsible for designing and leading enterprise-scale Azure solutions, with a focus on scalable, secure, and governed cloud platforms. This role owns the technical vision for the Azure foundation - infrastructure, networking, and automation - and provides hands-on leadership to engineering and DevOps teams delivering against that vision.

Key Responsibilities

Platform & Governance

• Design and architect Azure cloud platforms, Landing Zones, management groups, subscriptions, identity, governance, and core platform services.
• Design reusable cloud patterns and platform capabilities that support multiple business units, environments, or acquisitions.
• Define and implement best practices for Azure security, RBAC, PIM, Azure Policy, compliance, monitoring, backup, DR, and FinOps.
• Lead architecture for cloud migration, modernization, platform engineering, and workload onboarding initiatives.

Azure Infrastructure (core strength)

• Architect resilient, scalable compute across VMs, VM Scale Sets, Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), App Service, and serverless (Functions, Container Apps).
• Design storage and data platform architecture - Azure Storage tiers, managed disks, Azure Files/NetApp Files, and database services (Azure SQL, PostgreSQL/MySQL Flexible Server, Cosmos DB) - with the right performance, redundancy, and cost profile.
• Define multi-region and high-availability designs using availability zones, paired regions, load balancing, and geo-replication to meet defined RTO/RPO targets.
• Own capacity, performance, resiliency, and cost-optimization strategy across the estate (right-sizing, reservations/savings plans, autoscaling).
• Design observability across the platform - Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, alerting, dashboards, and diagnostics.
• Architect backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity using Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, and cross-region failover patterns.

Azure Networking (core strength)

• Define scalable Azure networking architectures, including hub-and-spoke and Virtual WAN topologies, VNet/subnet design, routing (UDRs, BGP), and multi-region connectivity.
• Architect hybrid and cross-premises connectivity via ExpressRoute, VPN Gateway, and private peering.
• Design DNS strategy across Azure Private DNS, private resolver, and hybrid name resolution.
• Implement private and secure connectivity using Private Link, Private Endpoints, service endpoints, and NAT Gateway.
• Architect network security and edge protection with Azure Firewall, NSGs/ASGs, Web Application Firewall, DDoS Protection, and Application Gateway / Front Door.
• Define micro-segmentation, traffic inspection, and zero-trust network patterns for enterprise workloads.

DevOps, IaC & Automation (core strength)

• Provide technical direction for Terraform/IaC (and/or Bicep), reusable modules, subscription provisioning ("subscription vending"), and standardized platform components.
• Design CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps and/or GitHub Actions for infrastructure and application delivery, including release strategies, approvals, and environment promotion.
• Establish GitOps and configuration-management practices, secrets management (Key Vault), and policy-as-code / compliance-as-code.
• Champion automation-first delivery - drift detection, automated testing of infrastructure, and self-service platform capabilities for application teams.
• Embed DevSecOps practices into pipelines (scanning, gating, supply-chain security).

Leadership & Collaboration

• Work with engineering teams to review designs, resolve technical challenges, and ensure alignment with the Azure Well-Architected Framework and industry best practices.
• Collaborate with customers, Microsoft, and security, networking, DevOps, and application teams to drive architecture decisions and successful delivery.
• Provide technical leadership across Azure compute, networking, storage, databases, integration, and containers as required.
• Mentor engineers and uplift team capability in cloud, networking, and automation.

Required Skills & Experience

• 8-15+ years in IT infrastructure/cloud, with several years in an Azure architecture or senior platform-engineering role.
• Deep, hands-on Azure infrastructure experience across compute, storage, databases, and containers (AKS).
• Strong Azure networking expertise - hub-and-spoke/vWAN, ExpressRoute, Firewall, Private Link, DNS, and routing.
• Proven experience with Terraform (and/or Bicep) and building reusable IaC at scale.
• Solid CI/CD and DevOps background (Azure DevOps and/or GitHub Actions) with an automation-first mindset.
• Experience designing and deploying Azure Landing Zones (Enterprise-Scale / CAF).
• Working knowledge of Entra ID, RBAC, PIM, Azure Policy, and cloud security/governance.
• Strong grasp of the Azure Well-Architected Framework and Cloud Adoption Framework.
• Excellent communication and stakeholder-management skills; able to translate architecture into business outcomes.

Certifications

Preferred:

• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305)
• Microsoft Certified: DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400)

Nice to have:

• Azure Network Engineer Associate (AZ-700)
• Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104)
• HashiCorp Terraform Associate

Nice to Have

• Experience with large-scale migrations, M&A integration, or regulated-industry compliance (ISO 27001, SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI-DSS).
• Scripting proficiency (PowerShell, Python, Bash).