Principal Engineer – Azure Cloud Platform

National Life Group; Montpelier (VT); On-site; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Flexible and customizable benefits

401(k) eligibility

Paid time off

Job summary

A leading insurance company is seeking a Principal Engineer to enhance cloud infrastructure and lead teams. This role involves automating cloud tools, implementing technology strategy, and mentoring staff. Candidates should have extensive experience with cloud technologies, especially Azure, and Kubernetes. This position is located in Montpelier, VT, with a four-day onsite schedule.

Qualifications

• 10+ years hands-on infrastructure experience.
• 4+ years in a technical team leadership role.
• 4+ years experience with public cloud technologies.

Responsibilities

• Lead development of cloud enablement tools.
• Drive implementation of technology strategy.
• Lead project support as a subject matter expert.

Skills

Hands-on infrastructure experience

Public cloud technologies

Kubernetes

Mentoring technical staff

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science

Tools

Azure

Kubernetes

VMware

Job description

Join to apply for the Principal Engineer, Cloud Engineering role at National Life Group.

Come join one of America’s fastest-growing insurance companies. Since 1848, National Life Group has aimed to keep our promises, providing families with stability in good times and in bad. We also strive to make the world a better place through charitable grants, paid volunteer time, environmentally sustainable workplaces, and events supporting nonprofits.

We foster a collaborative environment with opportunities for growth and encourage our associates to live our values: Do good. Be good. Make good.

Note: This position does not offer visa sponsorship.

Role Summary

The Principal Engineer partners with business and technical stakeholders to lead infrastructure design and integrations. The role drives continuous improvement across infrastructure ecosystems, leads teams in the delivery of infrastructure technologies and services, and champions operational excellence. The position can be located in Dallas (Addison), TX or Montpelier, VT and requires an onsite schedule of four days per week.

Essential Duties And Responsibilities

Infrastructure Delivery

• Lead development and enhancement of automation of cloud enablement tools.
• Drive implementation of the technology direction, vision, and strategy to enable Cloud technology adoption.
• Lead delivery of project support as a subject matter expert in infrastructure technologies.
• Help lead incident resolution and the resolution of business issues.
• Communicate effectively with all levels within the company.
• Lead identifying and managing capacity, performance, and risk.
• Adhere to and promote firm Change Management, Problem Management policies, and are familiar with ITIL or other formalized IT operations foundations.

Infrastructure Architecture & Strategy

• Drive innovation and encourage others to remain current on emerging technologies and development trends.
• Lead delivery of collaborative cloud solution architectures and roadmaps, including architecture standards, guidelines, and industry best practices.
• Lead development, design, and implementation of platform architectures that support key software development and deployment processes.
• Lead and review cloud-native and hybrid solution architectures.

Minimum Qualifications

• Bachelor’s degree (preferred in Computer Science) or relevant work experience.
• 10+ years hands‑on infrastructure experience with at least 4 years in a technical team leadership role.
• 4+ years hands‑on experience with public cloud technologies and solutions (Azure preferred).
• 3+ years hands‑on experience with Kubernetes, including deploying, managing, and scaling containerised applications.
• 2+ years hands‑on experience and knowledge of platform architectures and technologies.
• Open‑minded with proven ability to work collaboratively with others.
• Show up consistently with a positive attitude.
• Demonstrated ability to lead in a highly matrixed, heavily outsourced organization through influence, partnership, and authority.
• Ability and interest in mentoring technical staff and raising collective technical competencies.
• Ability to manage change and cope with complex and ambiguous situations.
• Certifications in Azure are highly desirable.
• Experience with OpenAI and AI technologies are highly desirable.
• Broad engineering awareness of the following technical domains and expert technical expertise in at least two of the following areas:
• Virtualisation Technologies (VMware, Hyper‑V, etc.)
• Public Cloud (Azure, GCP, AWS, etc.)
• Networking (CDN, SD‑WAN, Load Balancing, WAF, etc.)
• Monitoring & Instrumentation (New Relic, Splunk, Zenoss, etc.)
• Systems Administration (Windows, Linux, Active Directory, SCCM, etc.)
• Automation Technologies (CI/CD, Infrastructure‑as‑Code, etc.)

Benefits

• Your benefits start day one and are flexible and customizable to your and your family’s needs.

Base Pay Range

The base pay range for this position is the range National Life reasonably and in good faith expects to pay for the position, considering factors such as experience, education, training, certifications, business needs, and market conditions. The final salary or hourly wages offered may be outside this range based on other reasons and circumstances.

Additional Compensation and Benefits

The total compensation package may include medical, financial, and other benefits (including 401(k) eligibility, paid time off, vacation, sick leave, and parental leave). The successful candidate may also be eligible to participate in National Life’s discretionary annual incentive programs. National Life reserves the right to modify base salary or other compensation at any time.

National Life is accepting applications for this role on an ongoing basis and the role remains open until filled.