Cloud Engineer

TECHEAD is celebrating over thirty-five years of incredible heritage, talent, and accomplishments! To learn more about TECHEAD, visit us at TECHEAD.com or on Glassdoor.6 Month ContractContract to HireWe are seeking an experienced Cloud Systems Azure Engineer to join a specialized infrastructure team supporting a mission-critical, high-throughput digital commerce and underwriting transaction platform for a global insurance services leader.Reporting directly to the Cloud Infrastructure Manager, you will serve as a key custodian of a large-scale, highly resilient enterprise cloud environment. This is a high-visibility, hands-on role where you will operate across the entire cloud footprint—ensuring maximum uptime, bulletproof security posture, end-to-end automation, and performance optimization for customer-facing applications processing millions of high-value transactions.Key ResponsibilitiesCloud Operations & Reliability EngineeringMaintain, monitor, and optimize multi-region, production-grade Azure cloud environments to sustain 99.99%+ availability for mission-critical e-commerce and transaction engines.Partner with engineering leadership to execute proactive capacity planning, performance tuning, and resource scaling aligned with traffic spikes and market demand.Implement, test, and document comprehensive backup strategies, failover workflows, and disaster recovery (DR) plans to guarantee minimal RTO and RPO.Automation & Infrastructure as Code (IaC)Build and maintain reproducible cloud resources using modern Infrastructure as Code frameworks (Terraform, CloudFormation, or Ansible).Collaborate with application teams to streamline deployment pipelines (CI/CD), automating deployment gates, configuration drift detection, and rollout verification.Security, Identity & GovernanceEnforce enterprise-grade security baselines in coordination with Information Security teams, implementing least-privilege access management (IAM), secret rotation, and role-based access control (RBAC).Maintain compliance readiness across industry standards (SOC 2, PCI-DSS, ISO 27001) by conducting automated vulnerability assessments, configuration hardening, and remediation.Apply network segmentation, zero-trust network configurations, firewall rules, and API gateway routing.Monitoring, Telemetry & Incident ManagementBuild out actionable monitoring, distributed tracing, and centralized alerting systems (e.g., Datadog, Splunk, CloudWatch, Dynatrace) to pinpoint bottlenecks before they impact users.Participate in scheduled on-call rotation and root-cause analysis (RCA) for operational disruptions, ensuring comprehensive post-mortem documentation and remediation.Cross-Functional Collaboration & FinOpsServe as the infrastructure bridge between Software Engineering, IT Operations, Enterprise Architecture, and InfoSec.Monitor cloud spend, identify unused or over-provisioned infrastructure, and implement tagging structures and cost-saving policies (FinOps best practices).Required QualificationsExperience: 4+ years of dedicated hands-on experience designing, operating, and automating production infrastructure on Azure cloud, Azure Administrator.Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Proven proficiency using Terraform, CloudFormation, or similar tools to manage modular, immutable infrastructure.Networking & Security: Deep practical understanding of cloud networking fundamentals (VPCs, Subnets, Transit Gateways, Direct Connect/VPN, NAT, WAF, DNS/Route 53) and zero-trust IAM implementations.Scripting & Automation: Strong scripting capability in at least one language (Python, Bash, or PowerShell) for operational automation and task orchestration.CI/CD & Containers: Experience supporting containerized workloads (Docker, ECS, or Kubernetes/EKS) and continuous deployment pipelines (GitLab CI, GitHub Actions, Jenkins).Observability: Practical experience instrumenting APM, log aggregation, and real-time metric dashboards (Datadog, Splunk, Prometheus/Grafana, or ELK).Clearance/Eligibility: Must be eligible to work in the United States without sponsorship (or state your preferred policy).Preferred QualificationsExtensive experience with Microsoft Azure, including Entra ID, Virtual Networks/ExpressRoute, App Services, Azure SQL Database, Key Vault, Azure Policy, Azure Monitor/Log Analytics, Defender for Cloud, Sentinel, Azure Backup/Site Recovery, and Azure Cost Management.Azure certifications, such as Azure Administrator Associate (AZ-104); Azure Security Engineer Associate (AZ-500) a plus.Experience with New Relic, PagerDuty, and Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions.Experience with CIS benchmarks, PCI DSS, or other regulatory and audit frameworks.Experience supporting ecommerce, insurance, or financial services platforms.Experience using AI-assisted tools (e.g., Claude Code) to speed up infrastructure automation, troubleshooting, and documentation.RequirementsParticipation in an after-hours on-call rotation every two weeks is required.Hybrid & Conversion DetailsLocation: Hybrid in Richmond, VA (Tuesday & Thursday).Duration: 3 to 6-month contract with a clear roadmap to permanent full-time conversion based on performance and platform milestone delivery.TECHEAD's mission is to make our associates successful by placing them in the right environment so they can grow and prosper. How we treat and respond to our clients and employees is a reflection of who we are and makes us stand out from the rest. Keeping our business focused on building and maintaining relationships with our employees and clients is the key to our success. We won't strive for anything less.TECHEAD provides equal employment opportunities (EEO) to all employees and applicants for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, age, disability, genetic information, marital status, amnesty, or status as a covered veteran in accordance with applicable federal, state and local laws governing non-discrimination in employment in every location in which the company has facilities. This policy applies to all terms and conditions of employment, including, but not limited to, hiring, placement, promotion, termination, layoff, recall, transfer, leaves of absence, compensation, and training.For more information on TECHEAD please visit www.techead.com.No second parties will be accepted.