Lead Cloud Automation & AI Engineer

Searchability®; Newcastle upon Tyne; Hybrid; GBP 85,000 - 120,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Hybrid work pattern

Job summary

Searchability® is partnering with an international software organisation investing in cloud infrastructure, AI and automation. We are seeking a Senior AI & Automation Engineer to modernise infrastructure, drive scalable automation and champion AI-powered operations across a multi-cloud environment.

The role combines hands-on engineering with technical leadership, focusing on IaC, Terraform and Azure, plus automation frameworks, secure operations and mentoring engineers to raise engineering

Qualifications

• Extensive hands-on experience in infrastructure automation, cloud engineering, DevOps or platform engineering.
• Strong practical experience with Terraform, including designing and delivering reusable Infrastructure as Code solutions.
• Experience working with Microsoft Azure, ideally within cloud migration or infrastructure transformation programmes.
• Strong scripting and automation capabilities using languages such as Python, PowerShell or Bash.
• Experience designing, building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines.
• Solid understanding of cloud infrastructure, provisioning, configuration management and operational processes.
• Experience using AI-assisted development tools, LLMs or automation agents within an engineering environment.
• Knowledge of cloud security, identity and access management, and secrets management.
• Ability to investigate complex technical challenges and independently design and implement solutions.
• Strong communication skills and the confidence to challenge existing processes constructively.
• Experience mentoring engineers, sharing technical knowledge and promoting engineering best practices.
• Experience with OCI or other cloud platforms.
• Exposure to Pulumi or Bicep.
• Experience automating cloud migrations and large-scale infrastructure environments.
• Familiarity with AI development tools such as GitHub Copilot or Cursor.

Responsibilities

• Design, develop and implement infrastructure automation solutions across cloud environments.
• Build and maintain Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions, primarily using Terraform.
• Support cloud migration and infrastructure modernisation initiatives, automating provisioning, deployment and configuration processes.
• Identify manual, repetitive operational tasks and develop automation to improve efficiency, consistency and reliability.
• Design and enhance CI/CD pipelines to streamline infrastructure deployments and operational workflows.
• Explore and implement AI-powered automation, including LLM-assisted tooling and AI agents, to improve cloud operations.
• Establish reusable automation frameworks, engineering standards and best practices.
• Collaborate with infrastructure, cloud and platform engineering teams to challenge existing approaches and introduce more efficient ways of working.
• Embed security, identity and access management, and secrets management into automation solutions.
• Improve platform resilience, disaster recovery capabilities and operational performance through automation.
• Provide technical guidance, mentoring and knowledge-sharing to engineers across the wider business.
• Evaluate emerging AI and automation technologies and contribute to the future technical direction of the team.

Skills

Cloud automation

Terraform

Azure

CI/CD pipelines

Python scripting

LLMs / AI automation

DevOps / platform engineering

Automation

Tools

Pulumi

Bicep

OCI

GitHub Copilot

Cursor

Job description

Searchability® is partnering with an international software organisation investing in cloud infrastructure, AI and automation. We are seeking a Senior AI & Automation Engineer to modernise infrastructure, drive scalable automation and champion AI-powered operations across a multi-cloud environment.

The role combines hands-on engineering with technical leadership, focusing on IaC, Terraform and Azure, plus automation frameworks, secure operations and mentoring engineers to raise engineering