Principal Cloud Architect – Greenfield Cloud Platform

Simon James IT Ltd; Slough; Hybrid; GBP 92,000 - 103,000; Part time

Job summary

Simon James IT Ltd. is seeking a Principal Cloud Engineer in Slough for a 6-month contract, with 2 days on site per week. You will define the cloud strategy, build the landing zone, establish IaC/CI-CD and drive observability, security and governance across the platform.

You will lead architecture discussions with senior stakeholders, design reference patterns, and ensure scalable, secure cloud foundations for a major UK consumer brand.

Qualifications

• Proven AWS and Azure architecture and implementation experience.
• Strong networking and Infrastructure as Code skills.
• Cloud security and identity expertise.
• Containers and Kubernetes (or comparable).
• APIs, integration, messaging, and event-driven architecture.
• The credibility to influence senior stakeholders and explain trade-offs clearly.

Responsibilities

• Define cloud strategy, target architecture and roadmap from foundation through to production.
• Building the landing zone: account structure, IAM, networking, security and governance.
• Setting up Infrastructure as Code, CI/CD and automation.
• Putting in place observability, secrets management, resilience and DR.
• Creating reference architectures and reusable patterns for engineering teams.
• Reviewing and challenging technical designs.

Skills

AWS

Azure

Networking

IaC

Cloud security

Kubernetes

APIs

Event-driven

Stakeholder influence

Job description

Simon James IT Ltd. is seeking a Principal Cloud Engineer in Slough for a 6-month contract, with 2 days on site per week. You will define the cloud strategy, build the landing zone, establish IaC/CI-CD and drive observability, security and governance across the platform.

You will lead architecture discussions with senior stakeholders, design reference patterns, and ensure scalable, secure cloud foundations for a major UK consumer brand.