Senior Cloud Architect

About the role

Are you looking for an opportunity to lead a critical and talented Public Cloud engineering team setting the standards for Azure DevOps engineering and delivering reusable artifacts and DevOps services to drive Cloud adoption and modernisation? Are you ready to play a key role in Swiss Re's Cloud Transformation aimed at utilising world leading cloud services to make the world more resilient?  Would you like to apply your excellent leadership and architecture skills to combine Azure and other platforms and help application teams easily and securely adopt public cloud? Are you a subject matter expert in Azure and other provider's cloud services with the required knowledge to help Swiss Re identify, evaluate, design and deliver new capabilities from the Public Cloud in the best way for hundreds of application owners and developers to use and benefit from the shared investment? Are you passionate about excellent engineering practices and both driving and serving a development community making the most of what Public Cloud has to offer?

Then you are exactly the person we are looking for!

We are searching for a Capabilities and Engineering Lead to join our growing Public Cloud Transformation team reporting to the Cloud Transformation Delivery Director. Leading the capabilities and engineering team involves setting the objectives and roadmap for the team, working with high stakeholders to shape and improve the whole Cloud Development environment and the tools and services our domain engineering teams use to build applications in the cloud.

Your main responsibilities:

• Lead a team of 10 engineers to deliver services and capabilities in line with objectives set by public cloud transformation department.
• Provide guidance, mentorship, and instruction to the application DevOps teams. Establish values such as collaboration, communication, service consciousness, motivation, etc.
• Implement DevOps standards as per applications needs and contribute towards wider Swiss Re's DevOps strategy, goals, and roadmap working in cloud environments.
• Improve DevOps processes, identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas for automation or optimization, and implement the solutions.
• Help create sample applications to promote intended usage of public cloud services as per standard.
• Establish monitoring to proactively identify and address issues in production environments.
• Collaborate closely with various teams at Business domain IT teams to ensure that DevOps practices adhere to security standards and compliance requirements.

Participate in Product discussions, influence the roadmap, and make key decisions to ensure the successful implementation of all cloud platform initiatives

• Driving the cloud engineering community to ensure solutions are secure, resilient performant and compliant and helping each other through Inner Sourcing and other initiatives.
• Drive communication channels and deliver sessions with the team including communities of practice, blogs, SharePoint, knowledge sessions, hackathons and townhalls.

  The following proven technical skills will be required:

• Azure DevOps Expertise:
  • Deep understanding of Azure DevOps services (Azure Repos, Pipelines, Boards, Test Plans, Artifacts).
  • Familiarity with Azure Development practices like Repo structure and Branching strategies.
  • Familiarity with CI/CD pipelines and deployment automation.
  • Deep understanding of Terraform to implement IaC on Azure.
• Cloud Computing Knowledge:
  • Proficiency in Microsoft Azure services and architecture.
  • Proficiency in Azure CLI
  • Knowledge of cloud infrastructure and deployment, including IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.
• Programming and Scripting:
  • Proficiency in scripting languages like PowerShell and Terraform.
  • Knowledge of programming languages such as C#, Java, or JavaScript.
• Monitoring and Logging:

Familiarity with monitoring tools (Azure Monitor, Application Insights) and logging solutions.

About the team

You will be leading a skilled team of Cloud Engineers who are experts in cloud engineering and Infrastructure as Code and part of a larger Public Cloud Transformation team delivering business value through effective cloud adoption. As part of Cloud Transformation Delivery, the mission of this team is to deliver high quality engineering for products and services designed to help other engineering teams use Public Cloud and benefit from synergies across all our Business Domains. We also aim to support and provide a modern Cloud development experience to attract and retain the best talent.

About you

We are happy to meet you if you possess:

• University degree in Engineering, Computer Science (or comparable education/experience)
• >8 years of relevant development, engineering and architectural experience.

Track record and proven experience of leading medium sized development or engineering teams

• guiding and motivating team members working in AGILE.
• Extensive practical engineering experience working with Azure and/or AWS Cloud and Cloud Native architectures including ability to quickly learn and understand new cloud services and updates to existing cloud services from Cloud Service Providers.
• Hands on experience with Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and Azure DevOps pipelines and understanding of software development lifecycles.
• Strong understanding of cloud security including application and network level security best practices, able to apply and contribute to cloud security standards and guardrails enforced by Azure Policies.
• The passion to deliver the core engineering required to drive our cloud transformation and identify and support the upskilling of DevOps teams to deliver and support high quality, modern, Cloud Native solutions.
• A keen interest in a modern cloud development and new tools for higher productivity.
• Excellent communication skills with ability to influence stakeholders at multiple levels while building strong trust relationships and leading community sessions with 200+ attendees.
• Very strong analytical & conceptual skills.
• Ability to assess, learn and understand the overall impact of new things quickly as they develop in the Public Cloud space.
• At ease working in a transformational and complex environment at a fast-pace and getting things done.

Proficiency in English is required.