Cloud Platform Engineering Lead - Insurance

We are seeking an experienced and hands-on Cloud Platform Engineering Lead to design, build and run my clients London cloud platform as a secure, scalable, and product-like internal capability.

This role is focused on platform engineering with end-to-end ownership of the cloud platform, including its architecture, automation, security controls, and experience of roles using the platform (e.g. data, API and software engineers). They will remain technically hands-on while providing senior technical leadership across the IT function and working closely with Architecture, Security, and IT Operations.

The role works alongside a Cloud Services Partner but retains strong internal technical ownership, standards, and accountability for outcomes, leading that partner to ensure their focus on high priority items and the high quality of their deliveries., * Own the cloud platform architecture (primarily Azure, with some AWS), ensuring it is secure, scalable, resilient, and aligned to enterprise architecture standards. There is an expectation of alignment with the Landing Zones approach and adherence to the Well Architected Framework.

• Design and evolve shared cloud platform capabilities (networking, identity, landing zones, security controls, observability, backup, DR).
• Treat the cloud environment as a product, with clear standards, roadmaps, and continuous improvement - ensuring its consistency while it evolves over time.
• Remain hands on in the build and evolution of the platform, including Infrastructure as Code (e.g. Terraform), CI/CD pipelines and automation, Platform configuration, patterns, and reusable modules
• Set and enforce engineering standards for cloud environments, automation, and configuration management.
• Embed security by design into the platform, aligning with industry standards (e.g. NIST, ISO, GDPR).
• Own cloud security controls, policies, and technical guardrails.
• Ensure high availability, backup, disaster recovery, and incident readiness are engineered into the platform.
• Act as a senior escalation point for cloud related security incidents and major outages.
• Improve platform performance, availability, and cost efficiency.
• Lead cloud cost management and FinOps practices, including budgeting, optimisation, and transparency.
• Ensure effective monitoring, alerting, and observability across the platform.
• Contribute to long term cloud and technology strategy while remaining grounded in delivery.
• Manage the Cloud Services Partner from a strong technical owner perspective.
• Evaluate and recommend third party cloud services and tooling where appropriate.

'For the Cloud Platform Engineering Lead position, we're specifically looking for candidates with a strong background in Azure cloud infrastructure. The ideal candidate should have hands-on experience in creating and managing Azure resources in a production environment, and comfortable using Terraform and DevOps tools.

Beyond technical skills, we're looking for someone who can oversee our cloud landscape. This includes cloud monitoring and optimisation, ensuring the compliant and secure adoption of new technologies, and maintaining best practices across our tenant. Great communication skills are essential, as the candidate will need to effectively direct our main cloud partner.

While the primary focus is on cloud expertise, any experience with traditional on-premises infrastructure-particularly in networking-would be a valuable addition and something many experienced candidates will also have.', * 8+ years of hands-on experience designing and operating cloud environments, primarily Azure (AWS experience beneficial).

• Strong background in platform engineering, cloud architecture, and automation, not just infrastructure operations.
• Proven experience building and owning cloud platforms using Infrastructure-as-Code, including the lifecycle management of terraform assets
• Experience operating in regulated or security-sensitive environments.
• Deep technical understanding of:

• Cloud platform architecture and shared services
• Cloud security, identity, and networking
• Infrastructure-as-Code (ideally Terraform)
• CI/CD and DevOps practices
• Containers and modern deployment patterns
• Backup, restore, high availability, and disaster recovery
• Cloud cost optimisation and FinOps tooling.