Lead Azure Cloud Architect - SC Clearance in Winchester

At IBM Consulting UK FutureNow, you'll build a career at the forefront of hybrid cloud and AI, working with leading clients across the public and private sectors. You'll collaborate with top industry professionals, gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge technologies, and deliver solutions that create real business impact. From day one, you'll work on meaningful, high-profile programmes that stretch your skills and accelerate your growth. We invest heavily in you—supporting continuous learning, in-demand skills development, and long-term career progression. You'll thrive in a flexible, inclusive environment that values curiosity, encourages reinvention, and recognises what makes you unique.

We offer:

• Tools and policies to support your work-life balance from flexible working approaches, sabbatical programmes, paid paternity leave, maternity leave and an innovative maternity returners scheme.
• More traditional benefits, such as 25 days holiday (in addition to public holidays), private medical, dental & optical cover, online shopping discounts, an Employee Assistance Programme, life assurance and a group pension plan through salary sacrifice.

In this role, you'll work in one of our IBM Consulting FutureNow Centers, where we deliver deep technical and industry expertise to a wide range of public and private sector clients around the world. Our delivery centres offer our clients locally based skills and technical expertise to drive innovation and adoption of new technology.

Your role and responsibilities:

• Participating in various customer projects, from new infrastructure builds and migrations to audits and big data.
• Implementing configuration management infrastructure.
• Coaching and leading the small team of architects and engineers, leading delivery engagements, and supporting presales and sales architecture.
• People line management such as appraisals, holiday approval, allocating work resources, day-to-day people management.
• You will become a trusted advisor for high-profile enterprise businesses and jointly manage the customer relationship and roadmap with the wider Sales team.
• You’ll have a selection of different 'hats' to put on and have the luxury of following customer projects from start to release.
• As we have varying opportunities to work internationally, some readiness to travel in the UK and other locations in Europe is required.

Required education: None

Preferred education: Bachelor's Degree

Required technical and professional expertise:

• Hands-on experience with Cloud Architecture Design and/or Cloud Architectural Patterns for Development.
• Experience leading other Cloud Architects and leading delivery engagements.
• Advanced knowledge of Azure or AWS (multiple cloud providers is a plus).
• Solid engineering/technical background/hands-on experience with conceptualising, strategising, and architecting cloud solutions.
• Windows and/or Linux sys op background.
• Previous experience in the design and delivery of systems based on IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS offerings, as well as exposure to different architecture models.
• DevOps skills for leading the team and consulting the customer.
• Experience with building CI/CD pipelines.
• Knowledge of security, network, virtualisation, load balancer, storage, and database.
• Container technologies experience (e.g. Kubernetes, OpenShift).
• Hands-on experience with IaaC for managing the cloud.
• Coding/scripting skills (Bash, Python, Powershell, or similar).
• Active customer consultant and pre-sales attitude are a must.
• Fluent communication skills in English.

All applicants must have the right to work in the UK and must meet the criteria & be willing to go through Security Clearance.

ABOUT BUSINESS UNIT: IBM Consulting is IBM's consulting and global professional services business, with market-leading capabilities in business and technology transformation. With deep expertise in many industries, we offer strategy, experience, technology, and operations services to many of the most innovative and valuable companies in the world. Our people are focused on accelerating our clients' businesses through the power of collaboration.

YOUR LIFE @ IBM: In a world where technology never stands still, we understand that dedication to our clients' success, innovation that matters, and trust and personal responsibility in all our relationships, lives in what we do as IBMers as we strive to be the catalyst that makes the world work better. Being an IBMer means you'll be able to learn and develop yourself and your career, you'll be encouraged to be courageous and experiment every day, all whilst having continuous trust and support in an environment where everyone can thrive whatever their personal or professional background.

Our IBMers are growth-minded, always staying curious, open to feedback and learning new information and skills to constantly transform themselves and our company. They are trusted to provide ongoing feedback to help other IBMers grow, as well as collaborate with colleagues keeping in mind a team-focused approach to include different perspectives to drive exceptional outcomes for our customers.

The courage our IBMers have to make critical decisions every day is essential to IBM becoming the catalyst for progress, always embracing challenges with resources they have to hand, a can-do attitude and always striving for an outcome-focused approach within everything that they do.

Are you ready to be an IBMer?

ABOUT IBM: IBM's greatest invention is the IBMer. We believe that through the application of intelligence, reason and science, we can improve business, society and the human condition, bringing the power of an open hybrid cloud and AI strategy to life for our clients and partners around the world. Restlessly reinventing since 1911, we are not only one of the largest corporate organisations in the world, we're also one of the biggest technology and consulting employers, with many of the Fortune 500 companies relying on the IBM Cloud to run their business.

At IBM, we pride ourselves on being an early adopter of artificial intelligence, quantum computing and blockchain. Now it's time for you to join us on our journey to being a responsible technology innovator and a force for good in the world. IBM is proud to be an equal-opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, colour, religion, sex, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, pregnancy, disability, neurodivergence, age, or other characteristics protected by the applicable law. IBM is also committed to compliance with all fair employment practices regarding citizenship and immigration status.

OTHER RELEVANT JOB DETAILS: IBM wants you to bring your whole self to work and for you this might mean the ability to work flexibly. If you are interested in a flexible working pattern, please talk to our recruitment team to find out if this is possible in the current working environment.