Principal Cloud Operations Engineer
Location: HybridDepartment: IT OperationsType: Full-time, Permanent
At Laya Healthcare, we are committed to delivering reliable, secure, and high‑performing digital services that support our members, employees, and business operations. Our IT Operations team plays a critical role in enabling this by managing and evolving our technology platforms, ensuring resilience, scalability, and innovation across the organisation.
As we continue to strengthen and mature our cloud platform, we are now hiring a Principal Cloud Operations Engineer – a senior technical leadership role responsible for the technical operation, governance, and continuous improvement of our enterprise cloud environment, with a primary focus on Microsoft Azure.
This is a unique opportunity to take ownership of cloud operations at scale, influence platform strategy, and ensure our cloud environment is secure, resilient, and optimised to support business‑critical services.
About the Role
The Principal Cloud Operations Engineer is a senior technical expert responsible for owning and operating the cloud platform, ensuring reliability, observability, governance, and continuous optimisation. Unlike traditional engineering roles, this position is focused on cloud platform operations rather than application delivery pipelines.
You will provide technical leadership, drive operational excellence, and collaborate across teams to ensure cloud services are scalable, secure, and aligned with organisational needs.
This role requires deep technical expertise, strong ownership mindset, and the ability to influence stakeholders while remaining hands‑on in critical operational areas.
Operational Excellence
Own all technical aspects of cloud operations, monitoring, and incident response
Implement observability using Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, and Application Insights
Improve system reliability through SRE and DevOps practices
Azure Platform Leadership
Own and evolve Azure landing zones, subscriptions, and management groups
Enforce governance using Azure Policy, RBAC, and best practice frameworks
Drive platform performance, scalability, and reliability
Cloud Architecture & Engineering
Contribute to and guide the design of Azure-native platforms (IaaS, PaaS, serverless)
Maintain cloud reference architectures, standards, and best practices
Support delivery of secure, resilient, enterprise‑scale cloud systems
Security & Compliance
Embed security‑by‑design principles across the cloud platform
Implement controls such as Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Key Vault, and managed identities
Ensure compliance with regulatory and data protection requirements
Cost Management & Optimisation
Monitor and optimise cloud consumption for cost efficiency
Implement FinOps practices, budgeting, and governance controls
Provide guidance on cost‑effective platform design
Infrastructure as Code & Automation
Champion Infrastructure as Code using Bicep, ARM, and Terraform
Increase automation to reduce manual intervention and improve consistency
Support the transition of existing services to infrastructure‑as‑code where appropriate
Leadership & Collaboration
Act as a senior technical authority for cloud operations decisions
Mentor Cloud and DevOps Engineers
Collaborate with engineering, product, and infrastructure teams
Provide operational guidance to DevOps teams
Multi-Cloud Awareness
Maintain working knowledge of AWS to support hybrid cloud environments
Provide guidance on Azure vs AWS trade-offs where needed
About You
Essential
4–6+ years’ experience in cloud or infrastructure roles, including senior‑level experience
Strong expertise in Microsoft Azure, particularly in operating and managing cloud platforms
Deep understanding of networking, identity (Entra ID), compute, and storage services
Experience with Infrastructure as Code, automation, and CI/CD
Strong problem‑solving skills with experience managing incidents and root cause analysis
Hands‑on experience with Linux and/or Windows environments
Strong communication skills with the ability to influence stakeholders
Desirable
Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (or equivalent)
Terraform or similar IaC certification
Experience with containerisation and orchestration (Docker, AKS, Helm)
Familiarity with AWS in a hybrid or multi‑cloud environment
Experience designing and operating enterprise‑scale cloud platforms
Why Join Laya Healthcare?
Health insurance from day one
Hybrid working options
Competitive salary and annual bonus
Pension contributions
Generous maternity, paternity & adoptive leave
Continuous learning & career development
Access to wellbeing programmes and onsite gym facilities (where applicable)
A culture that values innovation, collaboration, and continuous improvement
If you’re passionate about cloud operations and platform excellence and want to play a key role in running and evolving a secure, scalable, and high‑performing cloud environment, we’d love to hear from you.
Apply today and help us power the future of cloud at Laya Healthcare.
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