Azure Cloud Architect (Practice Lead)

Crimson Line; Cape Town; On-site; ZAR 900,000 - 1,500,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

16 days annual leave

Office in N1 City

Job summary

Crimson Line, Cape Town-based IT solutions firm, seeks an Azure Architect to design and lead our Azure practice. You will own landing zones, security baselines, migrations, and cost estimates, while guiding a growing team of engineers and shaping the practice's processes.

You’ll report to the Managing Director, with a focus on delivering robust, scalable Azure solutions for diverse clients in fintech, ecommerce, and professional services. The role is based at our N1 City office in Cape Town.

Qualifications

• Active AZ-305 certification.
• 5+ years hands-on Azure infrastructure experience.
• 2+ years designing solutions built by others.
• Landing zones and Azure networking experience.
• On-prem to Azure migration experience.
• Ability present design costs to a financial director.

Responsibilities

• Design landing zones, hub-and-spoke networks, identity and security baselines, and migrations for clients.
• Scope opportunities into a defined scope, effort estimate, and Azure cost estimate within 3 business days.
• Review and sign off on the team's work; nothing closes without your approval.
• Develop Azure engineers with a concrete development plan for each person.
• Uphold runbook, IaC library, and certification plans behind Microsoft partner status.

Skills

AZ-305

Azure infrastructure

Landing zones

Azure networking

On-prem migration

Cost estimation

Bicep

Terraform

Engineering leadership

Tools

Terraform

Bicep

Job description

Most firms think their IT is covered. Until something goes wrong. We define responsibility before it becomes a problem, and we're looking for the architect who leads how our Azure practice does that.

You'll recognise yourself in this if…

• You read the Azure updates before your coffee goes cold, and you're already thinking about which client they could help.
• When you say it will be done on Thursday, it's done on Thursday. And when it won't be, you're the first to say so.
• You've told a client something they didn't ask to hear, because it was the right thing for their business.
• You'd rather understand the person behind a problem than just close the ticket, and you'd rather leave them with a solution than a workaround.
• A role that will look different in a year excites you more than one that won't.
• The best part of your month is when an engineer you've coached solves something without you.

If that sounds like you, read on.

The role

Most architects design it and hand it over. Here, you design it, you lead the people who build it, and you help decide how the practice runs.

Crimson Line has been solving IT for nearly 30 years. We're a Microsoft Solutions Partner with a specialisations in Identity and Access Management and Copilot. There are 26 of us, but we've deliberately kept the culture of a team of 10. Our Azure practice is growing and we work on very exciting projects.

What you’ll own

• Design: landing zones, hub-and-spoke networks, identity and security baselines, and migrations for clients in fintech, ecommerce, professional services and more
• Scoping: turn a qualified opportunity into a scope, an effort estimate and an Azure cost estimate within three business days, and present it to the people who sign
• Quality: review and sign off the team's work. Nothing closes without your approval.
• People: develop our Azure engineers, including a newly created Cloud Operations Engineer, with a real development plan for each person
• Standards: our runbook, infrastructure-as-code library and the certification plan behind our Microsoft partner status

Why you’ll want this one

• A structured start, not a deep end. Your first 30 days are for learning our client environments, our procedures and the people. You take over scoping in month one, lead new designs in month two, and own the practice scorecard by month three. Nobody expects you to fix everything in week one.
• You design; the team delivers. We're hiring a dedicated operations engineer so you won't be working the support queue.
• Your decisions stick. You report directly to the Managing Director.
• Foundations already in place. Intake gates, a project lifecycle and a profitability framework are documented. You improve them; you don't start from scratch.
• Clear boundaries. We own the Azure platform layer. Application code and business data are out of scope, and out-of-scope requests become change requests, not unpaid extra work.
• Room to keep growing. Funded certifications with protected study time, and a written scorecard from day one.
• Honest about the role. You're the escalation point for severe Level 3 incidents, which occasionally means out-of-hours work. Day-to-day standby is shared across the wider engineering team.

What you need

• An active AZ-305 (Azure Solutions Architect Expert)
• 5+ years of hands-on Azure infrastructure, including 2+ years designing solutions that others built
• Landing zones, strong Azure networking (UDRs, VPN or ExpressRoute, Azure Firewall, private endpoints, DNS), and identity and security design
• On-premises to Azure migration experience
• You've written scopes and estimates and been held to them, and you can present a design's cost to a financial director
• Bicep or Terraform, and experience developing engineers
• Nice to have: MSP or Microsoft partner experience, AZ-700, AZ-500, SC-100, DP-600 or AI-102, Azure Arc, Fabric or Azure AI, HaloPSA

Remuneration is market-related and based on your skills and experience. 16 days' annual leave. Full-time at our N1 City office. Crimson Line is an equal opportunity employer.

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