Director Technology Solutions - Azure Cloud

EPAM Systems; Chennai District; On-site; INR 8,000,000 - 11,000,000; Full time

Job summary

EPAM Systems is seeking a Practice Lead - Azure in India to steer the Azure cloud practice's health, growth, and strategic direction. The role combines technical leadership with people development and governance across delivery and business enablement.

You will lead architectural decisions, mentor teams, drive upskilling and certifications, and contribute to client conversations and RFPs while shaping the practice roadmap and service offerings.

Qualifications

• 22-26 years of overall IT experience with significant depth in Azure cloud architecture and practice leadership.
• Proven experience owning or building an Azure Cloud Practice or CoE in a services or consulting environment.
• Strong hands-on expertise in Microsoft Azure across networking, identity and security, IaC, Azure DevOps CI/CD and container orchestration.

Responsibilities

• Be the deepest technical expert within the Azure practice and the final authority on architecture decisions.
• Review and provide guidance on solutions designed by Azure Architects and Sr. Architects.
• Resolve critical technical escalations from ongoing Azure project engagements.
• Define and enforce technical standards, best practices, and guardrails across all Azure engagements.
• Drive cloud-native and well-architected approaches across the practice.
• Identify skill gaps and execute upskilling and Azure certification plans.

Skills

Azure architecture

CoE leadership

Pre-sales involvement

Azure DevOps

Kubernetes

PowerShell/Azure CLI

Tools

Terraform

Bicep

ARM templates

Azure CLI

Job description

Job Description:

The Practice Lead - Azure is a senior leadership role that sits between technical execution and strategic leadership. As the go-to technical authority for the Azure cloud practice, you will own the overall health, growth, and direction of the practice - spanning technical excellence, people development, delivery governance, and business enablement.
This role is ideal for someone who leads from the front technically, grows people intentionally, and thinks about the practice as a business unit they own.

Responsibilities

• Be the deepest technical expert within the Azure practice and the final authority on architecture decisions
• Review and provide guidance on solutions designed by Azure Architects and Sr. Architects
• Resolve critical technical escalations from ongoing Azure project engagements
• Define and enforce technical standards, best practices, and guardrails across all Azure engagements
• Drive cloud-native and well-architected approaches consistently across the practice
• Identify skill gaps and execute upskilling and Azure certification plans across the team
• Define career progression paths and build a high-performance, learning-driven culture within the practice
• Ensure all Azure projects follow defined technical quality standards and architecture principles
• Define and execute the Azure practice roadmap, including new capabilities, service offerings, and technology focus areas
• Build reusable assets, including reference architectures, accelerators, templates, and runbooks
• Lead and contribute to RFP/RFI responses and participate in client conversations and workshops as the Azure practice SME
• Identify and support upsell and cross-sell opportunities within existing accounts
• Represent the Azure practice in leadership reviews and governance forums
• Report Azure practice health metrics-utilization, certifications, project quality, bench strength to the Cloud & DevOps Entity Head
• Track Azure ecosystem trends and proactively introduce emerging services into the practice

Requirements

• 22-26 years of overall IT experience with significant depth in Azure cloud architecture and practice leadership
• Proven experience owning or building an Azure Cloud Practice or Center of Excellence (CoE) in a services or consulting environment
• Strong hands-on expertise in Microsoft Azure across networking, identity and security, infrastructure, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), Azure DevOps CI/CD and container orchestration
• Proficiency in networking solutions including VNet, NSG, Azure Firewall and ExpressRoute
• Solid understanding of identity and security tools such as Azure AD, Key Vault, Defender, Sentinel and Azure Policy
• Deep knowledge of infrastructure strategies including IaaS, PaaS, Azure Landing Zones and hybrid architectures
• Practical experience with Infrastructure-as-Code tools such as Terraform, Bicep and ARM Templates
• Expertise in implementing Azure DevOps pipelines and managing tools like PowerShell and Azure CLI
• Advanced skills in container solutions using AKS, Kubernetes, Helm and GitOps workflows
• Demonstrated experience in leading and mentoring large multidisciplinary teams across multiple seniority levels
• Proven success in pre-sales activities such as RFPs, technical proposals, client workshops and CXO-level presentations
• A strong foundation in application modernization including legacy assessment, replatforming, containerization, microservices and API-first transformation on Azure
• Ability to develop technical standards, governance frameworks and oversee architecture review processes
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to collaborate with and engage confidently with CXO-level stakeholders

Nice to have

• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) - strongly preferred
• Additional certifications - TOGAF, ITIL, or CKA
• Exposure to multi-cloud or hybrid environments (Azure Arc, AWS, GCP)
• Microsoft MVP recognition or active Azure community presence
• Thought leadership - blogs, conference speaking, or open-source contributions
• Exposure to FinOps and Azure cost governance practices