Principal Cloud Engineer

Role Description

Our Principal Cloud Engineer is a senior technical leader responsible for designing, governing, and optimizing cloud infrastructure and platforms across the organization. In this role, you will serve as the organization's senior technical authority for cloud architecture and infrastructure, bringing extensive expertise to establish engineering standards and governance, and to lead complex cloud initiatives from design through delivery.

Beyond technical leadership, you will mentor and guide the Systems Administration and Information Security teams, ensuring knowledge is shared through documentation, standards, and coaching. You will translate complex technical concepts into clear business and operational decisions, provide leadership during critical production events, and set the benchmark for engineering excellence.

• Serve as the highest-level technical authority and subject matter expert for all Azure cloud infrastructure and architecture.
• Define cloud engineering standards, architectural patterns, and governance practices that the organization adopts and follows.
• Own and lead cloud infrastructure projects end-to-end — from design and planning through execution, delivery, and post-deployment operations.
• Support the Manager of IT & IS on cloud strategy, architecture roadmap, and platform investment decisions.
• Mentor and develop the Systems Administration and Information Security teams — building organizational cloud competency through hands-on guidance, deliberate coaching, and knowledge transfer.
• Participate in evaluating and onboarding new cloud engineering talent as the team grows.
• Collaborate with Development teams to design and deliver application infrastructure on Azure.
• Provide Tier 2/3 escalation support to the IT Help Desk for complex infrastructure and cloud issues.
• Partner with the Information Security team to implement and evidence compliance controls for HITRUST 11.3r2 and SOC2.

Qualifications

• 7–10 years of experience in infrastructure, systems, or cloud engineering.
• 5 years of senior or principal level experience in Microsoft Azure.
• Demonstrated experience building or establishing a cloud engineering practice or function — not just operating an existing one; comfort setting standards others follow.
• Expert-level knowledge of Azure networking including hub-spoke topology, Virtual Networks, NSGs, Azure Firewall, Application Gateway, ExpressRoute, Private Endpoints, and DNS.
• Proven ability to independently architect Azure environments — designing governance, security, and operational frameworks from the ground up, not inheriting them.
• Expert-level experience with Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or Azure Bicep) including module design, state management, CI/CD integration, and enforcement of no-manual-change disciplines.
• Strong experience with CI/CD pipeline tooling (Azure DevOps, GitLab, or GitHub Actions) including automated security scanning and progressive delivery practices.
• Demonstrated experience leading cloud migration projects including workload assessment, planning, execution, and legacy decommission.
• Strong project leadership — able to own and drive multiple complex initiatives simultaneously with minimal oversight.
• Proven ability to mentor and develop technical staff across multiple teams; experience building organizational capability through deliberate knowledge transfer and hands-on coaching.
• Experience establishing incident response, disaster recovery, and business continuity practices with defined and tested RPO/RTO targets.
• Expert-level knowledge of Azure identity and security services including Entra ID, RBAC, PIM, Key Vault, and Defender for Cloud.
• Strong networking and security fundamentals: network segmentation, secrets management, least-privilege access, and certificate lifecycle management.
• Proficiency in at least one scripting or automation language (PowerShell, Python, or Bash).
• Working knowledge of compliance frameworks (HITRUST, SOC2, HIPAA) with experience building audit evidence processes that hold up under scrutiny.
• Clear written communication and sound judgment under production pressure — able to make decisions and convey technical context to non-technical stakeholders.
• Experience with Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) solutions preferred.
• Experience with Azure AI and platform services preferred.
• Familiarity with healthcare data exchange standards (EDI, HL7, or SFTP-based interfaces) preferred.

Requirements

• Bachelor's degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field, or equivalent professional experience.
• AZ-104 (Azure Administrator Associate) required — must already hold.
• AZ-700 (Azure Network Engineer Associate) required — must already hold.
• AZ-305 (Azure Solutions Architect Expert) required — must already hold.
• AZ-400 (DevOps Engineer Expert) strongly preferred.

Benefits

• A competitive compensation package.
• Benefits include healthcare, vision, and dental insurance, a generous 401 (k) match, paid vacation, personal time, and holidays.
• Growth and training opportunities.
• An award-winning remote work environment.