About the role
- Overview: A remote, permanent, full-time Cloud Platform Team Lead reporting to the SVP of Engineering, requiring working-hours overlap across the UK and US. You will lead the cloud team and own the Azure platform.
- The Mission: A hands-on role combining infrastructure design and operations with team leadership. You will provide secure hosting for internal agents and MCP workloads, own SOC 2 infrastructure compliance, and drive developer self-service so other teams can deploy independently.
What you'll do
- Hands-On Infrastructure & Terraform: Design, write, and review modular Terraform across multiple environments, and operate core production Azure services (App Service, Functions, PostgreSQL, Key Vault).
- Developer Self-Service & CI/CD: Build versioned infrastructure templates and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions, Azure DevOps) to empower engineering teams to provision and deploy services independently.
- AI & Agentic Workloads: Own secure, repeatable hosting and deployment patterns for internal agents and MCP workloads, partnering with Architecture on network guardrails and cost controls.
- Team Leadership & Delivery: Run team ceremonies, 1:1s, performance reviews, and capacity planning while actively mentoring and developing engineers.
- Security & SOC 2 Compliance: Maintain first-class cloud security (least-privilege IAM, network isolation) and own the infrastructure controls, audit evidence, and pen-test remediation for SOC 2.
- FinOps & Cost Reporting: Track cloud spend, drive optimisations (reservations, rightsizing), and coordinate consolidated monthly cost reports across Azure, Snowflake, and Estuary.
Experience
- Proven experience in cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, SRE, or DevOps, including leading engineers and owning team delivery.
- Strong production experience with Azure across multiple subscriptions and environments (networking, Entra ID identity, PaaS data services, cost management).
- Expert-level Terraform skills (reusable modules, state management, multi-environment deployments, line-by-line plan review).
- Experience building CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions and/or Azure DevOps, plus reusable infrastructure patterns for other teams.
- Strong scripting capabilities in PowerShell, Bash, or Python (heavy usage of PowerShell).
- Hands-on security and compliance experience (SOC 2 or ISO 27001 control ownership, audit evidence, access reviews, pen test remediation).
- Demonstrated leadership in capacity planning, developing engineers, driving adoption, and engaging senior stakeholders.
- Practical background in platform monitoring, incident response, backups, and tested recovery procedures.
- Clear written communication skills for RFCs, runbooks, and executive reports, alongside participation in on-call rotations.
Desirable
- Experience with AI/agent platforms (Azure AI Foundry, MCP) and daily use of AI coding assistants.
- Deep PostgreSQL operations and FinOps practice.
- Containerisation proficiency (Docker, Azure Container Apps) and monitoring expertise (Grafana, Azure Monitor, SLOs).
Benefits
Competitive salary
Private Health (UK - BUPA) / Competitive Health Insurance (US)
Short Term / Long Term Disability Cover (US)
Critical Illness and Income Protection (UK)
Self-directed PTO
Flexible Work Location
Flexible Hours
Pension (UK) / 401k (US)
Cloud Platform Team Lead (UK) employer: Smartwyre
Smartwyre is an exceptional employer that fosters innovation and collaboration within a dynamic work culture, particularly for the Data and Insights Team Lead role. With flexible working hours and locations, competitive health benefits, and a strong emphasis on employee growth through mentorship and hands-on involvement, Smartwyre empowers its team to drive impactful solutions in the agricultural SaaS industry. Joining Smartwyre means being part of a forward-thinking company that values creativity and teamwork while addressing critical challenges faced by farmers and distributors globally.
