Senior Azure Cloud Engineer (Temporary Contract) at ApplaudoStudios

About You This is a high‑impact senior Azure Cloud / DevOps role supporting a Private Equity Group (PEG) platform. The team is greenfield, the infrastructure is new, and the customer is highly selective and security‑conscious. You must operate with strong autonomy, deep hands‑on Azure expertise, and the ability to own cloud architecture end‑to‑end. The expectation is to design, build, operate, and evolve production systems directly. You will work closely with VP‑level technical stakeholders in an environment where reliability, deployment safety, and clarity in communication are essential. This position requires someone who can challenge assumptions constructively, explain architectural tradeoffs clearly, and operate effectively in ambiguous, early‑stage environments. • Note: This position is offered under a contractor model for a period of 6 months with the possibility of extension.  You Bring to Applaudo the Following Competencies • 5+ years of hands‑on Azure architecture experience, including subscription and resource group strategies, identity and access control (RBAC, managed identities), and end-to-end ownership of production Azure environments. • Strong experience designing and operating Azure networking, including VNets, subnets, NSGs, routing, private endpoints, and firewall concepts. • Hands‑on production experience with Azure PaaS services, including Azure App Services, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, Azure Front Door, and Azure Storage. • Expert-level Kubernetes and AKS operations, including cluster provisioning and upgrades, node pools, scaling strategies, networking integration (CNI, ingress), and workload isolation and security best practices. • Production-grade Terraform expertise, including modular design, environment separation, and state management with Azure backends. • Strong CI/CD automation experience integrating infrastructure as code and application deployments using Git-based pipelines. • Solid reliability engineering experience, including monitoring and alerting design, incident response and recovery, post-incident analysis, and the ability to reason about availability, scalability, cost optimization, and deployment safety. • Scripting ability using Bash and Python for automation and operational tooling. • Active use of AI-assisted engineering tools such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot, or Cloud Code to accelerate infrastructure development, incident response, and documentation. • Strong communication skills, with the ability to operate confidently with VP-level stakeholders during architectural reviews and operational incidents. • Advanced English proficiency, as you will work directly with US-based clients. You Will Be Accountable for the Following Responsibilities • Design and own Azure cloud architecture for a greenfield PEG platform, including subscription structure, networking, identity, and environment separation. • Build and operate AKS-based workloads and supporting Azure PaaS services, ensuring high availability and operational resilience. • Implement and maintain CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and application deployments, ensuring deployment safety and environment isolation. • Operate and evolve Terraform-driven infrastructure, maintaining modular design, clean state management, and consistent IaC practices across environments. • Design and maintain monitoring and alerting strategies across platform services, ensuring visibility into availability, performance, and reliability. • Lead troubleshooting and resolution of production issues, coordinate recovery efforts, and execute structured post-incident reviews. • Improve platform reliability, automation, and developer experience through proactive runbook creation and operational documentation. • Partner with security and engineering stakeholders on network policies, access controls, private connectivity, and compliance requirements. • Use AI tools to accelerate infrastructure automation, documentation, and deployment safety validation. • Challenge technical assumptions and advocate for scalable, secure, and cost-effective Azure architectures. • Communicate clearly and confidently during incidents and architectural reviews with VP-level technical stakeholders.