Principal Cloud Engineer

Job Title: Principal Cloud Engineer
Location: Slough - 2 days a week
Salary/Rate: £500 - £545 a day Inside IR35
Start Date: Mid-End of October
Contract Length: Initial 6 Month Contract

Company Introduction

We have an exciting opportunity with a leading organisation looking for a highly technical Principal Cloud Engineer to define and build its cloud strategy from the ground up. This is a unique opportunity for a senior cloud specialist to shape the architecture, establish engineering standards and work hands-on with engineering teams to deliver a secure, scalable and resilient cloud platform.

Job Responsibilities/Objectives

You will take ownership of cloud architecture and engineering foundations, combining strategic thinking with hands-on implementation to turn architectural decisions into production-ready solutions.

1. Define Cloud Strategy & Architecture: Develop the cloud strategy, target architecture and implementation roadmap, working closely with senior technology leaders, architects and engineering teams to establish practical architectural principles and standards.

2. Build the Cloud Foundation: Design and implement the core cloud platform, including account and subscription structures, landing zones, networking, identity and access management, security, governance and connectivity.

3. Drive Hands-On Engineering: Work directly with engineers to build the initial platform, develop prototypes and proof-of-concepts, and translate architectural designs into working cloud solutions.

4. Infrastructure Automation & DevOps: Establish Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automated provisioning, CI/CD pipelines and reusable deployment patterns to enable consistent, efficient and reliable engineering delivery.

5. Security, Resilience & Observability: Design secure, highly available and resilient cloud environments, covering secrets and key management, monitoring, logging, disaster recovery, backup and operational standards.

6. Technical Leadership & Standards: Create reference architectures and reusable engineering patterns, review and challenge technical designs, resolve complex technical problems and influence senior stakeholders on key architectural decisions and trade-offs.

Required Skills/Experience

The ideal candidate will have the following:

1. Extensive Cloud Architecture Experience: Proven experience designing and implementing complex cloud solutions across both AWS and Microsoft Azure, with the ability to define target architectures and translate strategy into practical implementation.

2. Cloud Infrastructure & Networking: Strong hands-on expertise in cloud networking, connectivity, identity and access management, security, governance and Infrastructure as Code (IaC).

3. Modern Distributed Systems: Strong understanding of modern cloud-native architecture, distributed systems, APIs, integration, messaging and event-driven architectures, alongside experience with containers and Kubernetes or comparable technologies.

4. Security, Resilience & Reliability: Demonstrable experience designing secure, scalable, highly available and resilient systems, including disaster recovery, observability and operational best practices.

5. Cloud Strategy & Technical Leadership: Experience influencing cloud or technology strategy at senior level, making sound architectural decisions and communicating complex technical trade-offs to architects, engineering leaders and security stakeholders.

6. Hands-On Delivery & Ownership: A track record of working closely with engineers and Solution Designers to take solutions from architectural design through to implementation. You must be comfortable working independently, navigating ambiguity and taking ownership of technical outcomes.

Desirable Skills/Experience

Although not essential, the following skills are desired by the client:

1. Experience building a cloud platform, landing zone or cloud foundation from the ground up in a greenfield environment.

2. Platform engineering experience, including the development of self-service capabilities, reusable infrastructure components and standardised engineering patterns.

3. Strong experience with CI/CD, cloud automation, automated infrastructure provisioning and modern DevOps practices.

4. Experience working within telecoms, telecommunications or an MVNO environment, or delivering highly integrated, high-volume, customer-facing platforms.