Cloud Infrastructure Engineer, Principal (Contractor)

Job summary

The Principal Cloud Infrastructure Engineer sets technical direction for cloud architecture, engineering standards, automation, resilience, and platform reliability across Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and hybrid infrastructure. The role designs and guides secure, scalable solutions for critical applications and real-time rig data, leads infrastructure automation, migrations, and incident response, and partners with security, governance, and business teams to support operational continuity and cost management. Key technologies include Terraform, Bicep, PowerShell, Python, Azure DevOps, and GitHub.

Qualifications

• Expert knowledge of Azure infrastructure, including compute, networking, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Azure Policy, Azure Backup, Azure Site Recovery, and Azure Kubernetes Service.
• Advanced working knowledge of GCP infrastructure, networking, identity, monitoring, logging, security controls, and hybrid connectivity.
• Advanced knowledge of hybrid infrastructure, including DNS, routing, firewalls, load balancing, F5, VPN, private connectivity, identity integration, virtualization, Nutanix, and datacenter dependencies.
• Strong Infrastructure as Code and automation skills, including Terraform, Bicep, ARM templates, GitHub, Azure DevOps, PowerShell, Python, YAML, JSON, and automated testing.
• Strong understanding of cloud security, least privilege, privileged access, secrets management, encryption, vulnerability remediation, and policy-as-code.
• Ability to architect resilient systems with high availability, disaster recovery, backup and recovery alignment, monitoring, and operational runbooks.
• Strong IT service management skills, including change, incident, and problem management, documentation, operational readiness, and service ownership.
• Ability to lead technical work across internal teams, contractors, managed-service providers, vendors, and business partners without formal reporting authority.
• Ability to explain cloud engineering decisions in terms of operational continuity, cost, risk, reliability, security, and business value.
• At least 10 years of progressive experience in infrastructure, cloud engineering, cloud architecture, systems engineering, platform engineering, or a related discipline.
• At least 5 years of hands-on experience designing, engineering, and operating Azure solutions in a complex enterprise environment.
• A bachelor's degree in information technology, computer science, engineering, or a related field is preferred; equivalent education, certifications, and relevant experience may be considered.
• Experience in mission-critical, 24/7 operational environments is strongly preferred; energy, drilling, industrial, or other high-availability experience is preferred.

Responsibilities

• Set technical direction for cloud engineering, architecture, and hybrid platform design across Azure and GCP.
• Define cloud architecture patterns, landing-zone standards, platform guardrails, and operational readiness standards.
• Design and guide implementation of secure, resilient, highly available cloud solutions for critical applications and real-time rig data.
• Lead Infrastructure as Code and automation practices using tools such as Terraform, Bicep, PowerShell, Python, Azure DevOps, and GitHub.
• Provide technical leadership for cloud migrations, modernization, disaster recovery, backup readiness, observability, and cloud-native services.
• Improve monitoring, alerting, logging, capacity planning, incident triage, root cause analysis, and operational runbooks.
• Lead technical troubleshooting and service restoration during major cloud incidents.
• Partner with cybersecurity and governance teams on access controls, network segmentation, vulnerability remediation, data protection, and audit readiness.
• Support FinOps through consumption reviews, rightsizing recommendations, and improved tagging and reporting.
• Guide engineers and partners through design reviews, implementation, change planning, testing, and technical coaching.
• Maintain architecture documentation, operational playbooks, standards, and knowledge articles.

Skills

Certifications

Degrees

Industry

Contract length

Relocation