Head of Cloud (Azure)
4 days ago
Kingston upon Thames
A senior leadership role owning the strategy, reliability, and evolution of our entire Azure estate — infrastructure, networking, cloud security, budget management, and platform engineering. You will report to the Director of Technology, manage a team of Cloud Engineers, and own the platform underpinning our consumer‑facing products, data platform, and internal tooling. The estate runs a hub‑and‑spoke landing zone, AKS‑hosted microservices, event‑driven architectures, and a growing Databricks data platform, and we’re migrating off a legacy VM estate toward cloud‑native services. You will balance perfection against expediency to meet business needs, embedding yourself across technology, product, and commercial — setting expectations, building trust, and striking the right balance between short‑ and long‑term goals. • Define and own a 3–5 year cloud strategy for Cazoo across infrastructure, networking, security, and platform engineering., • Drive migration from the legacy VM estate to a cloud‑native platform (AKS, Azure Functions, managed services)., • Design and maintain the Azure Landing Zone — hub‑and‑spoke topology, subscription management, and governance policies., • Partner with Product, Commercial, and Engineering leadership so cloud accelerates business outcomes; represent Cloud & Security on the Technology Management Team, shaping strategy, culture, and ways of working., • Manage cloud budgets, drive FinOps, and oversee third‑party vendor relationships., • Drive adoption of AI‑assisted engineering, automation, and self‑service platform capabilities that improve developer productivity and operational efficiency., • Deep expertise designing and operating secure Azure networking architectures, including hybrid connectivity, segmentation, routing, ingress and identity‑aware access patterns., • Ensure secure, scalable operation across AKS, Azure Functions, and remaining VM workloads., • Own infrastructure‑as‑code with Terraform and Helm, ensuring consistency and repeatability across environments., • Champion DevSecOps and security‑by‑design with InfoSec, enforcing Zero Trust, compliance, and threat mitigation., • Maintain observability (Azure Monitor, Prometheus, Grafana, PagerDuty) and operational excellence through incident management, on‑call, and continuous reliability improvement., • Lead, mentor, and grow a high‑performing Cloud team, fostering an engineering culture of feedback, continuous learning, and technical excellence., • Give feedback, recognise great work, and support career development; own and improve team engagement scores., • Provide technical leadership and mentorship across the wider technology organisation., • Bring a calm, steadying presence during incidents and high‑pressure periods, and foster an architectural mindset across cloud and infrastructure teams., • Several years leading Cloud or Platform Engineering teams, with significant Azure‑at‑scale experience., • Azure networking: hub‑and‑spoke, VNets, VPNs, NSGs, ASGs, firewalls, DNS, ExpressRoute, hybrid connectivity., • Designing, building, and operating secure, scalable Azure platforms (AKS, Azure Functions, managed PaaS)., • Infrastructure as Code with Terraform and Helm, including IaC best practices and governance., • Proven cloud migration and modernisation programmes (legacy VM → cloud‑native)., • Azure security: Key Vault, Managed Identities, RBAC, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Azure Policy, Microsoft Entra ID., • Observability and monitoring (Azure Monitor, Application Insights, Prometheus, Grafana, PagerDuty) and FinOps/cost‑accountability practices across engineering teams., • Strong grasp of SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets., • Developing technical strategies for a cloud/infrastructure discipline and gaining senior‑stakeholder buy‑in; giving clear, actionable direction in complex situations to keep teams aligned., • Exceptional communication — translating technical direction for non‑technical stakeholders — and a natural coaching/mentoring style., • WAF technologies — Azure Application Gateway, Azure Front Door, or third‑party (Cloudflare, Akamai), • Azure data services — Data Lake Storage, Databricks, AI Search, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL Flexible Server, • Container networking and service mesh (e.g. Istio), plus Azure Container Registry, • Azure messaging — Service Bus, Event Grid, Event Hubs, • CI/CD pipelines — Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, • API Management platforms — e.g. Azure APIM, • Azure certifications Financials • We offer an annual bonus scheme., • We more than match your commitment to your pension, so when you contribute 6%, we put in 9%, taking your total up to 15% of your base salary., • Quarterly value‑led awards with generous cash prizes., • Referral Bonus: Recommend a colleague, get £2,000. Work‑Life • 25 days (plus bank holidays) (increasing after 2 years of service), • Hybrid role, two days a week based in our Richmond office, • Family Enhanced leave after 6 months of service:, • Maternity/Pregnant Parent Leave: 20 weeks at 100% pay., • Paternity/Non‑birth Parent Leave: 12 weeks at 100% pay., • Volunteer Days: We offer 2 volunteer days a year so you can help out wherever matters to you. Health & Peace of Mind • AXA Private Healthcare: High‑level coverage for you, partners, and dependents—including pre‑existing conditions., • Bupa Dental: Level 2 coverage for cashback on preventative, restorative and emergency care., • Private GP: 24/7 digital access via Help@Hand., • Income Protection: 13 weeks of sick pay, before going onto Long term Illness cover with Canada Life., • Life Assurance: 4x basic salary covered by Unum., • Specialist Support: Free counseling and menopause/fertility support via Peppy. Your Growth • Learning budget and continuous development opportunities. Every manager has a dedicated budget for your specific role development. The Extras • Your choice of a MacBook or Windows laptop., • Perks@Work: Discounts at over 30,000 retailers and entertainment venues., • Annual conference with top tier industry guest speakers., • Social events including a Summer bash and an annual festive party., • Free food & drinks in the office., • We’re proud partners of Brentford FC, and we share the rewards with you. #J-18808-Ljbffr