Lead Cloud Engineer

xdesign; United States; Hybrid; USD 140,000 - 190,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible hybrid or remote work

35 days leave incl. holidays

Private medical insurance

Enhanced parental and adoption leave

Financial coaching

5% pension match

40 hours paid learning & development

Job summary

xdesign is seeking a technical leader to guide cloud engineering projects across migration, platform engineering and AI enablement. The role blends hands-on development with client advisory work, delivery oversight and mentoring.

You will build reliable, scalable cloud platforms using AWS CDK, containers, and Kubernetes, while optimizing costs and promoting observability.

Qualifications

• Strong hands-on cloud engineering experience.
• Experience with IaC, CI/CD, containers, Kubernetes and Helm.
• Experience designing or operating cloud platforms for demanding client environments.
• Knowledge of AI infrastructure, vector databases, retrieval-augmented generation or related modern data architectures.
• Experience with observability tooling such as OpenTelemetry and cloud cost-management approaches.
• Proven client-facing consulting experience, including stakeholder management, commercial constraints, SLAs, budgets and deadlines.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for one or more client or internal project teams, acting as technical lead or individual contributor.
• Define migration approaches, shared tooling, deployment standards and responsibilities across delivery teams.
• Build infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines and containerised application platforms using tools such as AWS CDK, Docker, Kubernetes and Helm.
• Support cloud-native and AI workloads, including vector databases, retrieval-augmented generation architectures and AI lifecycle infrastructure.
• Introduce observability and automated cost-control practices across cloud estates.
• Advise clients, contribute to proposals and bids, and identify opportunities for further cloud or data work.
• Mentor cloud engineers and represent the cloud capability through events, technical writing or community activity.

Skills

Cloud engineering

IaC

CI/CD

Kubernetes

Docker

Helm

OpenTelemetry

Cost governance

Client facing

Mentoring

Tools

AWS CDK

Docker

Kubernetes

Helm

OpenTelemetry

Job description

Role overview

Provide technical leadership for cloud engineering projects spanning migration, platform engineering and AI enablement. The role combines hands‑on engineering with client advisory work, delivery oversight, pre‑sales contribution and mentoring, helping teams build reliable, scalable and cost‑conscious cloud platforms.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for one or more client or internal project teams, acting as technical lead or individual contributor.
• Define migration approaches, shared tooling, deployment standards and responsibilities across delivery teams.
• Build infrastructure as code, CI/CD pipelines and containerised application platforms using tools such as AWS CDK, Docker, Kubernetes and Helm.
• Support cloud‑native and AI workloads, including vector databases, retrieval‑augmented generation architectures and AI lifecycle infrastructure.
• Introduce observability and automated cost‑control practices across cloud estates.
• Advise clients, contribute to proposals and bids, and identify opportunities for further cloud or data work.
• Mentor cloud engineers and represent the cloud capability through events, technical writing or community activity.

Requirements

• Strong hands‑on cloud engineering experience, including software development and efficient production code.
• Experience with infrastructure as code, CI/CD, containers, Kubernetes and Helm.
• Experience designing or operating cloud platforms for demanding client environments.
• Knowledge of AI infrastructure, vector databases, retrieval‑augmented generation or related modern data architectures.
• Experience with observability tooling such as OpenTelemetry and cloud cost‑management approaches.
• Proven client‑facing consulting experience, including stakeholder management, commercial constraints, SLAs, budgets and deadlines.

Nice to have

• Experience in regulated sectors such as financial services or online gaming.
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator, professional‑level cloud architecture certification or FinOps certification.
• Specialist credentials in generative AI, machine learning engineering or AI engineering.

Benefits and work setup

Flexible hybrid or remote working is available, with occasional travel to client sites or team offices. The package includes 35 days of leave including bank holidays, private medical insurance, enhanced parental and adoption leave, financial coaching, a 5% pension match and 40 hours of paid learning and development.