The role
Job description
The Cloud Engineer is a hands-on technical role responsible for architecting, building, operating and optimising multi-cloud, virtualisation and server infrastructure. The role owns the health, security, performance, resilience and cost-efficiency of the infrastructure estate — from on-premises and virtual servers through to Azure (primary), AWS and GCP landing zones.
The role combines deep technical expertise in cloud engineering, server and policy configuration, virtualisation and infrastructure-as-code with strong operating discipline across FinOps, software asset management, backup / disaster recovery and supplier relationships. The ideal candidate is equally comfortable designing landing zones, hardening Windows and Linux servers, authoring Terraform / Bicep modules, optimising cloud spend and managing vendors — while automating repetitive work wherever possible.
KEY RESPONSIBILITIES
1. Cloud Engineering & Infrastructure Management
• Act as the lead cloud engineer for the estate — architect, deploy and manage cloud infrastructure across Azure (primary), AWS and / or GCP, covering compute, storage, networking and identity integration.
• Design and manage cloud networking — virtual networks, subnets, load balancers, VPN / ExpressRoute, DNS, and firewall / NSG rules.
• Define landing zones, resource governance, tagging, RBAC and Azure Policy / guardrails for secure and consistent provisioning.
• Engineer scalability, resilience and high availability — auto-scaling, redundancy and multi-region / availability-zone design.
• Operate cloud-native services (containers, serverless, PaaS data services) in line with reference architectures and well-architected principles.
2. Server Administration & Policy Configuration
• Build, configure, harden, patch and maintain Windows and Linux servers across physical, virtual and cloud environments to enterprise security baselines.
• Design and manage Active Directory, Group Policy Objects (GPOs), security policies and configuration baselines; enforce least-privilege and standardised builds.
• Configure server roles and services — DNS, DHCP, file / print, IIS, certificate services, and clustering / high availability.
• Maintain gold images, build standards and configuration management to ensure consistency across the estate.
3. Virtualisation & VM Lifecycle Management
• Expertly create, configure, size and manage virtual machines across VMware vSphere / ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V and cloud platforms (Azure, AWS, GCP).
• Define and apply VM policies — resource allocation, affinity / anti-affinity rules, snapshots, templates, tagging, naming conventions and lifecycle governance.
• Manage virtualisation hosts, clusters, storage (SAN / NAS) and capacity planning; optimise performance and utilisation.
4. Cloud Cost, FinOps & Spend Management
• Own cloud spend management — monitor consumption, forecast and report on cloud cost against budget across all subscriptions / accounts.
• Drive FinOps practices — rightsizing, reserved instances / savings plans, auto-scaling and elimination of idle or orphaned resources.
• Produce cost dashboards and chargeback / showback reporting; identify and deliver measurable cost-optimisation opportunities.
• Partner with Finance and Delivery teams on budget planning, variance analysis and consolidated spend reporting across multi-cloud environments.
5. Software Asset Management (SAM) & Licensing (Infrastructure Scope)
• Own the Software Asset Management lifecycle for infrastructure tooling — discovery, inventory, entitlement reconciliation and effective-licence-position (ELP) reporting.
• Manage licensing across Microsoft (server / cloud SKUs), VMware and other key infrastructure vendors; ensure compliance and audit-readiness and avoid over- or under-licensing.
• Maintain the CMDB / asset register for hardware and infrastructure software; manage renewals, true-ups and lifecycle retirement.
6. Backup, Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity
• Design, implement and test backup and disaster-recovery solutions with defined RPO / RTO targets.
• Manage backup tooling (e.g. Veeam, Azure Backup, native cloud snapshots), replication and periodic recovery testing.
• Maintain and regularly rehearse business-continuity and DR runbooks.
7. Monitoring, Automation & Infrastructure-as-Code
• Build and manage CI / CD and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, ARM / Bicep) pipelines to automate provisioning and enforce consistency.
• Implement proactive monitoring, alerting and observability across servers, cloud and endpoints (e.g. Azure Monitor, Nagios, Zabbix, PRTG).
• Automate routine operations using PowerShell, Python and Bash to reduce manual effort and configuration drift.
• Maintain accurate documentation, runbooks and knowledge-base articles for every automation and architecture pattern.
8. Vendor, Supplier & Service Management
• Manage infrastructure suppliers and cloud partners — performance against SLAs, contract and renewal management, and escalations.
• Evaluate new tools and services; build business cases and coordinate procurement with IT leadership.
• Operate within ITIL-aligned change, incident and problem management processes.
EDUCATION & CERTIFICATIONS
Education
• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology or a related field (or equivalent experience).
Required / Preferred Certifications
• Microsoft Azure (primary): AZ-104 (Azure Administrator) required; AZ-305 (Azure Solutions Architect Expert) preferred; AZ-500 (Azure Security) advantageous.
• Virtualisation: VMware VCP-DCV; demonstrable Microsoft Hyper-V experience.
• Additional Cloud: AWS SysOps Administrator / Solutions Architect, or equivalent Google Cloud certification.
• Infrastructure-as-Code: HashiCorp Certified: Terraform Associate (preferred).
• FinOps & Service Mgmt: FinOps Certified Practitioner; ITIL Foundation.
• Software Asset Management: IAITAM CSAM / CHAMP (advantageous).
EXPERIENCE REQUIREMENTS
• Minimum 8–10 years of hands-on IT infrastructure experience across servers, virtualisation and cloud in an enterprise environment.
• Proven, deep expertise in Azure (primary) with working expertise in at least one of AWS or GCP; experience operating multi-cloud estates at scale.
• Strong track record of landing-zone design, cloud networking and governance (RBAC, tagging, Azure Policy / Service Control Policies).
• Hands-on experience configuring server, group and security policies and creating and governing virtual machines at scale across VMware / Hyper-V and cloud.
• Demonstrable experience managing cloud spend / FinOps — rightsizing, commitments, idle-resource elimination and chargeback / showback reporting.
• Experience owning backup, DR and business-continuity for mixed on-prem and cloud workloads with defined RPO / RTO.
• Experience managing infrastructure suppliers and cloud partners within ITIL-aligned operations.
TECHNICAL SKILLS & COMPETENCIES
Core Technical Skills
• Cloud engineering (primary): Azure — compute, storage, networking, Entra ID integration, Azure Policy, landing zones, high-availability design; working expertise in AWS and / or GCP.
• Virtualisation: VMware vSphere / ESXi, Hyper-V; VM creation, policies, templates, snapshots, affinity rules and lifecycle governance.
• Server administration: Windows Server and Linux; Active Directory, Group Policy, DNS, DHCP, PKI / certificates, IIS, clustering.
• Cloud networking: VNets / VPCs, subnets, load balancers, VPN / ExpressRoute, DNS, NSGs / security groups, firewalls.
• Automation & IaC: Terraform, ARM / Bicep, PowerShell, Python, Bash; CI / CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions).
• FinOps & SAM: Cost dashboards, forecasting, chargeback / showback; licensing compliance for Microsoft, VMware and infrastructure vendors.
• Backup & DR: Veeam, Azure Backup, native cloud snapshots, replication and recovery testing.
• Monitoring & observability: Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Nagios, Zabbix, PRTG or equivalent.
SOFT SKILLS & COMPETENCIES
• Problem-solving: Strong analytical and structured problem-solving with a methodical, documentation-driven approach.
• Communication: Clear written and verbal English; able to explain technical topics to non-technical stakeholders including Finance and Leadership.
• Ownership: Reliable ownership of infrastructure health, security, resilience and cost with minimal supervision.
• Automation mindset: A default preference for automating repetitive work and eliminating configuration drift.
• Collaboration: Effective supplier and cross-team collaboration within ITIL processes.
ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS
• Based in Gurugram or Hyderabad, with flexibility to work in shifts and provide on-call / out-of-hours support as required.
• Willingness to travel occasionally to other sites for infrastructure projects.
• High integrity and commitment to maintaining the confidentiality of all client, applicant and company information.