Cloud & Hosting Lead

Halfords Careers; Hawkesley; Hybrid; GBP 90,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Competitive salary

Car allowance

Annual discretionary bonus

Pension

Life assurance

25 days annual leave + bank holidays

Hybrid working

Job summary

Halfords is seeking a Cloud & Hosting Lead to own the hybrid hosting estate across Azure, AWS, on-premise infra and colocation, defining platform direction and driving secure, scalable cloud outcomes.

You will partner with engineering, data and security teams to mature governance, observability, automation, and FinOps, while managing third‑party partners and shaping the migration roadmap for future growth.

Qualifications

• Proven experience leading cloud and hosting platforms in a large enterprise.
• Strong Azure knowledge with multi-cloud experience (AWS).
• Delivery of cloud transformation, migrations, or platform maturity programmes at scale.
• Experience with data centres, colocation or physical hosting environments.
• Managed outsourced engineering or MSPs with influence beyond direct reports.

Responsibilities

• Own cloud and hosting estate across Azure, AWS, on‑premise, and colocation.
• Define IaC governance and standards, driving adoption across cloud consumers.
• Deliver cloud migration roadmap and modernise workloads.
• Mature cloud platform with governance, guardrails, automation and observability.
• Manage third‑party engineering/ops partners and ensure service quality.
• Own cloud cost management and FinOps activities across the estate.
• Collaborate with dev, data, AI, security and infra teams to meet business needs.
• Develop strategic roadmaps, budgets and platform plans for growth.

Skills

Cloud leadership

Azure expertise

Multi-cloud

Stakeholder management

Budget management

Tools

Azure

AWS

Infrastructure as Code

Governance

Job description

About us

Halfords is on a journey - building the future of motoring and cycling and looking for people who want to help shape what comes next. We’re a place for cocreators: people who want to make a real impact, take ownership and be part of something that’s still evolving.

Technology at Halfords is at a turning point. We’re modernising our foundations, sharpening our delivery, and ensuring every technology decision is connected to real commercial and customer outcomes.

We're looking for people who act as trusted advisors to the business, take end-to-end accountability for outcomes, and can balance pace with long-term architectural integrity. Innovation here means practical, scalable solutions, not ideas that stay on whiteboards.

Halfords operates a hybrid working policy – this position will be based 3 days per week at our support centre in Redditch, West Midlands.

About the role

As Cloud & Hosting Lead, you'll take ownership of Halfords' hybrid hosting estate across Azure, AWS, on-premise infrastructure, and colocation environments. This is a strategic leadership position focused on defining the direction of the platform, driving technical improvements, and ensuring our cloud and hosting capabilities are secure, scalable, and fit for the future. You'll be the recognised expert in this space, with accountability for both the ongoing operation of the estate and its continued evolution.

Working closely with engineering teams, architects, application owners, and third‑party service providers, you'll oversee cloud platform engineering, hosting operations, cloud migrations, FinOps, and infrastructure governance. Whilst outsourced partners will deliver much of the day‑to‑day engineering activity, you’ll own the platform strategy, roadmap, priorities, and outcomes, ensuring delivery aligns to business needs and technology objectives.

This role offers a unique opportunity to mature and transform an already established environment rather than simply maintain it. We have solid foundations in place, but there is significant scope to improve governance, observability, automation, cost optimisation, and platform consistency. If you’ve previously led cloud and hosting environments at scale and enjoy balancing strategic thinking with operational ownership, you’ll have the opportunity to make a visible impact across the organisation

Key responsibilities

• Own the cloud and hosting estate across Azure, AWS, on‑premise infrastructure, and colocation environments, ensuring services remain secure, reliable, and scalable
• Own the organisation's Infrastructure as Code strategy, governance and standards, establishing a consistent approach to cloud platform provisioning and management, driving adoption across all cloud consumers, and ensuring changes are delivered through controlled, auditable and repeatable engineering practices by internal and partner teams
• Define and deliver the cloud migration roadmap, identifying opportunities to modernise workloads and reduce on‑premise dependency over time
• Lead the ongoing maturity of the cloud platform, implementing governance frameworks, guardrails, automation, observability, and best practices
• Manage third‑party engineering and operations partners, holding them accountable for service quality, delivery performance, and continuous improvement
• Own cloud cost management and FinOps activities, providing visibility of spend and driving optimisation opportunities across the estate
• Collaborate with development, data, AI, security, and infrastructure teams to ensure cloud services support current and future business requirements
• Develop strategic roadmaps, budgets, investment priorities, and platform plans that support long‑term organisational growth and technology objectives

About you

• Proven experience leading cloud and hosting platforms within a large, complex enterprise environment
• Strong knowledge of Microsoft Azure, with experience operating or governing multi‑cloud environments that include AWS
• Demonstrable experience delivering cloud transformation, migration, or platform maturity programmes at scale
• Understanding of both cloud and traditional on‑premise infrastructure, ideally with experience supporting data centres, colocation facilities, or physical hosting environments
• Experience managing outsourced engineering or managed service providers, with the ability to influence outcomes without direct line management responsibility
• Strong leadership, stakeholder management, and communication skills, capable of acting as a trusted advisor to both technical and non‑technical audiences
• Commercially aware, with experience managing budgets, technology roadmaps, cloud costs, and investment planning

Reward & benefits

• A fair and competitive salary evaluated against market data, car allowance, annual discretionary bonus scheme, pension, life assurance, 25 days annual leave plus bank holidays and enhanced family leave.
• Commitment and dedication to your ongoing personal and professional development. We help you to own and grow your potential so you can be at your best in your current role and to support your future career aspirations.
• We offer hybrid working with a blend of working in our Support Centre and from home.
• You will have access to a wealth of employee discounts across the Halfords suite of products and services.
• Wellbeing and inclusion are at the heart of our colleague experience. We offer resources and ongoing support to enhance your wellbeing at work and active Colleague Networks supporting inclusion initiatives across Halfords.

At Halfords we are committed to creating an inclusive workplace for our colleagues. We're an equal opportunities employer and proud to welcome applications from all backgrounds and embrace diversity within our one Halfords Family.

Note: Halfords operates a hybrid working policy – this position will be based 3 days per week at our support centre in Redditch, West Midlands.