Lead Engineer - Cloud Engg & AI

Anblicks Inc.; Hyderabad; On-site; INR 4,200,000 - 6,500,000; Full time

Job summary

Anblicks Inc. is seeking a Lead Azure Cloud Engineer to own the design, automation, and operational health of our Azure platform.

You will set engineering standards, drive IaC maturity, and lead a team of cloud/DevOps engineers while remaining hands-on across architecture and reliability. You will design landing zones, lead migration efforts, own core services (AKS, App Services, Azure SQL, ADLS Gen2), and define guardrails for downstream teams.

Qualifications

• Strong hands-on Azure expertise across compute, networking, storage, identity, and PaaS services.
• Proven IaC experience with Terraform and/or Bicep/ARM in production environments.
• Deep CI/CD experience with Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions and scripting (PowerShell/Python).
• Solid containerization knowledge (Docker/Kubernetes/AKS) and cloud security governance.
• Demonstrated technical leadership, mentoring, and ability to align infrastructure with delivery roadmaps.

Responsibilities

• Design, provision, and evolve Azure landing zones, networks, and identity boundaries.
• Lead cloud migration/modernization workstreams including rehost/replatform/refactor decisions.
• Own core platform services (AKS, App Services, Functions, Azure SQL, ADLS Gen2) and integration patterns.
• Define guardrails and reference architectures for downstream teams.
• Establish IaC standards, automate provisioning, and reduce drift across environments.
• Own CI/CD strategy and pipelines (Azure DevOps / Azure Pipelines or GitHub Actions).
• Implement secure release processes with quality gates and automated rollback.
• Embed security in the pipeline (Azure Policy, SAST/DAST) and ensure governance at scale.
• Lead observability, incident response, and resiliency testing; drive reliability improvements.
• Mentor engineers, contribute to sprint planning, and align infra with delivery roadmaps.

Job description

The Lead Azure Cloud Engineer owns the design, automation, and operational health of the Azure cloud platform. Acting as the technical anchor for the CloudOps function, this person sets engineering standards, drives infrastructure-as-code and CI/CD maturity, and leads a team of cloud/DevOps engineers while remaining hands-on across architecture, automation, and reliability.

Key Responsibilities

• Design, provision, and evolve Azure landing zones, resource hierarchies, networking (VNets, NSGs, private endpoints), and identity boundaries.
• Lead cloud migration and modernization workstreams — rehost/replatform/refactor decisions, target-state architecture, and cutover planning.
• Own core platform services (AKS, App Services, Functions, Azure SQL, storage tiers such as ADLS Gen 2, Event Hub, Key Vault) and their integration patterns.
• Define reference architectures and guardrails that downstream teams build against.

Infrastructure as Code & Automation

• Establish and enforce IaC standards using Terraform and/or Bicep/ARM, including module libraries, versioning, and state management.
• Automate environment provisioning end to end so environments are reproducible, disposable, and drift-free.
• Build automation for routine operational tasks (scaling, backups, patching, secrets rotation) to reduce manual toil.

CI/CD & Release Engineering

• Own the CI/CD strategy and pipelines (Azure DevOps / Azure Pipelines or GitHub Actions), including build, test, artifact management, and multi-stage deployments.
• Implement branching and release strategy (e.g., Git Flow / trunk-based) with quality gates, approvals, and automated rollback.
• Integrate automated testing and code-quality gates into the pipeline so releases are safe and repeatable.

Security, Compliance & Governance

• Implement Azure RBAC, least-privilege access, and identity governance (Entra ID, managed identities, PIM).
• Embed security into the pipeline — SAST/DAST scanning, dependency checks, secret scanning, and policy-as-code (Azure Policy).
• Maintain compliance posture against relevant standards (e.g., SOX, SOC 2) through audit trails, controls, and evidence automation.

Observability & Reliability

• Stand up monitoring, logging, and alerting (Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, App Insights) with meaningful SLOs and dashboards.
• Lead incident response, root-cause analysis, and blameless post-mortems; drive reliability improvements from findings.
• Own DR/backup strategy, high-availability design, and periodic resilience testing.

Cost & Performance Optimization (FinOps)

• Monitor and optimize cloud spend — rightsizing, reserved capacity, autoscaling, and tagging for cost allocation.
• Provide cost visibility and forecasting to stakeholders and flag optimization opportunities proactively.

Technical Leadership & Mentorship

• Set technical direction and engineering standards for the cloud/DevOps team; lead code and design reviews.
• Mentor and upskill engineers, and act as escalation point for complex platform issues.
• Contribute to sprint planning, backlog shaping, and effort estimation as the technical lead within the POD.
• Partner with data, application, and security teams to align infrastructure with delivery roadmaps and dependencies.
• Translate business and platform requirements into cloud solutions, and communicate technical decisions to non-technical stakeholders.
• Champion DevOps culture — shared ownership, automation-first, and continuous improvement across teams.

Required Skills & Experience

• Strong hands-on Azure expertise across compute, networking, storage, identity, and PaaS services.
• Proven IaC experience with Terraform and/or Bicep/ARM in production.
• Deep CI/CD experience, ideally with Azure DevOps, plus scripting (PowerShell, Bash, and/or Python).
• Solid grounding in containerization and orchestration (Docker, Kubernetes/AKS).
• Experience with cloud security, RBAC, and governance at scale.
• Demonstrated technical leadership — mentoring, standard-setting, and driving delivery.
• Relevant certifications a plus: Azure Administrator/Solutions Architect (AZ-104 / AZ-305), DevOps Engineer Expert (AZ-400).

Preferred / Nice-to-Have

• Experience modernizing legacy or on-prem workloads into Azure.
• Familiarity with data-platform tooling in an Azure ecosystem (Snowflake, SnapLogic, DBT, Event Hub/Kafka).
• Exposure to FinOps practices and multi-cloud or hybrid environments.
• Experience operating under regulated/compliance-heavy conditions (SOX, SOC 2).

Required Skills

DevOps & CI/CD Cloud Migration and Modernization Azure Services