Lead Cloud Solutions Architect

This is a client-facing, presales-led role with deep technical credibility behind it. You will be the person our clients and prospects turn to when they need a cloud expert who can listen, translate complexity into clear options, and earn confidence at every level, from a hands-on engineer to a board sponsor.

You will sit at the bridge between sales and delivery. Most of your week is spent in front of clients: leading discovery conversations and workshops; shaping, writing and presenting solutions for new opportunities; scoping technical effort accurately; and giving prospects the confidence to choose us. Behind that sits genuine Azure depth, enough to design the solution yourself, guide the engineers who build it, and step in as the senior technical authority when a complex problem needs you.

In short: a trusted advisor and a player-coach. You win the work with credibility, set the technical direction, and raise the standard of everyone around you.

What You’ll Do

• Be the trusted client advisor. Lead technical workshops and discovery sessions, build relationships with senior stakeholders, and explain complex cloud concepts in language the business understands. This is the core of the role.

• Lead presales and solution design. Partner with our sales team to architect compelling, well-scoped solutions, validate requirements, size effort accurately, and turn opportunities into proposals and signed engagements.

• Own the architecture. Produce high-level and low-level designs for secure, scalable, resilient cloud solutions - primarily on Microsoft Azure - and hand them into delivery with clarity and confidence.

• Act as senior technical authority. Be the escalation point our delivery and support teams call on for the genuinely hard problems, providing direction and ownership when it matters most.

• Coach and raise the bar. Mentor our cloud engineers, model technical excellence, and champion modern practices, Infrastructure as Code, DevSecOps and automation, across the practice.

• Keep us secure and compliant by design. Ensure solutions align with the Well-Architected Framework, our own rigorous security standards, and regulatory obligations such as DORA for our financial services clients.

You are, first and foremost, an outstanding communicator who happens to be a serious cloud technologist; not the other way around.

• Client-facing by instinct. You are confident and credible in front of clients, comfortable running a workshop, presenting to a leadership team, and building trust quickly. You enjoy the commercial, fast-moving rhythm of winning work.

• Commercially astute. You understand the “why” behind the “what,” and you design solutions that fit a client’s budget, risk appetite and business goals.

• A presales / consulting background. You have worked in a presales, consulting or client-facing architecture role, ideally within an MSP, Microsoft partner or vendor and you know how to move an opportunity from conversation to commitment.

• Genuinely deep on Azure. You have a strong track record (typically 10+ years in IT, with substantial Azure design and transformation experience) so your advice carries weight and your designs are sound.

• A player-coach. You will happily get hands-on to solve a major problem or prove a new approach, but your real satisfaction comes from elevating the team and the client around you.

The technical depth behind it

You don’t need to be the deepest specialist in every area below - but you do need real, credible expertise across the core, and working knowledge of the rest, so that clients and engineers alike take your guidance seriously.

Core expertise (essential):

• Microsoft Azure: solution design across compute, storage, networking and platform services

• Identity & Security: Microsoft Entra ID (Conditional Access, PIM), Key Vault, Azure Policy

• Infrastructure as Code: hands-on Terraform (Bicep an advantage)

• Azure Networking Fundamentals: vNets, peering, firewalls, private connectivity

Strong in several of (important):

• Microsoft Sentinel and Defender for Cloud

• Advanced PowerShell and automation

• Windows Server, Active Directory, DNS and PKI foundations

• Migration approaches, Azure Migrate and database migration strategies

Nice to have (desirable):

• AWS (VPC, EC2, S3, IAM), Kubernetes (AKS) and Docker

• Azure Data Services: Azure SQL, Data Factory, Power BI; Linux in a cloud context

Certifications such as AZ-305 or AZ-500 are highly valued; CISSP, Terraform Associate or AWS Solutions Architect - Professional are a bonus. Demonstrable client-facing experience matters more to us than a complete certification set.

• A pivotal, high-visibility role shaping the future of our cloud practice, with a clear path to grow into practice leadership

• Complex, high-stakes transformation work for serious clients in regulated sectors

• A senior-level package: competitive salary, bonus and comprehensive benefits

• A substantial budget for your ongoing training, certification and development