Principal Azure Cloud Engineer

Principal Azure Cloud Engineer

As a Principal Azure Cloud Engineer, you will play a hands-on senior engineering role within BMO's Azure cloud ecosystem. This role is primarily focused on engineering cloud platforms and systems on Azure, with additional responsibility for designing and enabling production-grade systems.

You will design, build, and operate secure, scalable Azure infrastructure and platform services that digital workloads.

This role blends deep cloud and platform engineering with applied system design. You will work in agile, cross-functional pods with cloud engineering, data engineering, and security and risk partners to evolve BMO's Azure platforms. As a senior engineer, you will influence technical direction, help define architecture standards, and mentor other engineers while remaining deeply hands-on.

Key Responsibilities

Cloud Engineering & Platform Delivery

• Design, build, and operate Azure cloud infrastructure and shared platform services supporting digital workloads.
• Implement and evolve Azure landing zones, subscriptions, networking, identity, and governance aligned with enterprise standards.
• Build cloud-native solutions using Azure PaaS services, containers, and managed platforms.
• Ensure platforms meet requirements for scalability, resilience, performance, cost efficiency, and reuse.
• Apply DevOps and SRE practices, including CI/CD, monitoring, alerting, and operational readiness.

Systems Enablement

• Enable systems on Azure through secure, standardized platform capabilities.
• Design and implement cloud-based architectures for various applications, including API-driven and event-driven patterns.
• Support system patterns such and orchestration of workflows.
• Contribute to reference architectures and reusable components.

Infrastructure as Code & Automation

• Design and maintain Infrastructure as Code using Bicep, ARM, Terraform, or CDK-based frameworks.
• Create reusable, modular deployment patterns that balance self-service with governance.
• Automate environment provisioning, configuration, and policy enforcement across environments.
• Enable repeatable deployment of AI-ready environments and services.

Security, Governance & Risk

• Apply security-by-design principles across identity, networking, encryption, secrets management, and auditability.
• Implement secure service-to-service authentication using managed identities and least-privilege access.
• Ensure Azure cloud solutions comply with security, privacy, data governance, and regulatory requirements.
• Support architecture reviews, risk assessments, and audits in partnership with security and risk teams.
• Design platforms with observability, traceability, and operational controls enabled by default.

Required Technical Skills & Competencies

Core Azure Cloud Engineering (Must-have)

• Hands-on experience engineering solutions on Microsoft Azure in large-scale or regulated environments.
• Strong understanding of Azure networking, identity, access management, and governance.
• Experience designing for scalability, reliability, performance, and cost efficiency.
• Proven ability to troubleshoot and operate production Azure environments.

Infrastructure as Code & DevOps (Must-have)

• Experience with Infrastructure as Code using Bicep, ARM, Terraform, or similar tools.
• Experience building and operating CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and application delivery.
• Familiarity with IAM models, role definitions, and least-privilege access patterns.

Cloud-Native Integration & APIs (Must-have)

• Experience with Azure API Management or similar API gateway solutions.
• Understanding of secure service exposure, authentication, rate limiting, and API lifecycle management.
• Experience designing service-based and event-driven architectures.

Reliability & Observability (Nice-to-Have)

• Experience implementing monitoring, logging, alerting, and operational dashboards.
• Familiarity with SRE concepts such as SLIs, SLOs, and resilience patterns.

Qualifications & Experience

• 10+ years of experience in Azure cloud engineering, platform engineering roles.
• 3+ years experience in a Principal Engineer role, driving initiatives and provide leadership to the team and CIO partner teams.
• Proven experience delivering and operating Azure-based platforms or services in production.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Engineering.

$112,200.00 - $209,000.00

Salaried

The above represents BMO Financial Group's pay range and type. Salaries will vary based on factors such as location, skills, experience, education, and qualifications for the role, and may include a commission structure. Salaries for part-time roles will be pro-rated based on number of hours regularly worked. For commission roles, the salary listed above represents BMO Financial Group's expected target for the first year in this position.

BMO Financial Group's total compensation package will vary based on the pay type of the position and may include performance-based incentives, discretionary bonuses, as well as other perks and rewards. BMO also offers health insurance, tuition reimbursement, accident and life insurance, and retirement savings plans.

About Us

At BMO we are driven by a shared Purpose: Boldly Grow the Good in business and life. It calls on us to create lasting, positive change for our customers, our communities and our people. By working together, innovating and pushing boundaries, we transform lives and businesses, and power economic growth around the world.

As a member of the BMO team you are valued, respected and heard, and you have more ways to grow and make an impact. We strive to help you make an impact from day one – for yourself and our customers. We'll support you with the tools and resources you need to reach new milestones, as you help our customers reach theirs. From in-depth training and coaching, to manager support and network-building opportunities, we'll help you gain valuable experience, and broaden your skillset.

BMO is proud to be an equal employment opportunity employer. We evaluate applicants without regard to race, religion, color, national origin, sex (including pregnancy, childbirth, or related medical conditions), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, transgender status, sexual stereotypes, age, status as a protected veteran, status as an individual with a disability, or any other legally protected characteristics. We also consider applicants with criminal histories, consistent with applicable federal, state and local law.

BMO is committed to working with and providing reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities. If you need a reasonable accommodation because of a disability for any part of the employment process, please send an e-mail to View email address on click.appcast.io and let us know the nature of your request and your contact information.

Note to Recruiters: BMO does not accept unsolicited resumes from any source other than directly from a candidate. Any unsolicited resumes sent to BMO, directly or indirectly, will be considered BMO property. BMO will not pay a fee for any placement resulting from the receipt of an unsolicited resume. A recruiting agency must first have a valid, written and fully executed agency agreement contract for service to submit resumes.