Platform Engineer (Azure)

Ascend Analytics•Boulder, CO

3d•$85,000 - $115,000•Hybrid

About The Position

Ascend Analytics is hiring a Platform Engineer to design, build, and operate the Azure platform that hosts its Market Intelligence, PowerVAL, PowerSIMM, SmartBidder, Ascend Power Procurement, and Ascend Energy Exchange products. The role works alongside the Senior Platform Engineer at the intersection of cloud infrastructure, DevOps, identity, and security administration. The engineer will partner with Development, Model Support, and client-facing teams to deliver reliable environments, migrate clients from on-premises hosting to Azure, and help maintain security and compliance.

Requirements

At least 4 years of experience in cloud platform, DevOps, or infrastructure engineering, including at least 3 years of hands-on Microsoft Azure experience.
Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, or a related field, or equivalent experience.
AZ-104 or a similar intermediate-level Azure certification.
Strong working knowledge of Azure IaaS and PaaS, including VMs, App Services, Storage, Key Vault, Container Apps, and Azure Batch.
Strong working knowledge of Terraform and infrastructure-as-code practices.
Azure networking experience, including VNet design, VPN gateways, private endpoints, NAT, DNS, and firewall rules.
Hands-on Entra ID administration, including conditional access, MFA, SSO, app registrations, and PIM.
Proficiency with PowerShell and KQL for automation and reporting.
Experience building CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps.
Clear technical writing skills and ability to communicate with non-technical stakeholders.

Nice To Haves

Experience supporting a SOC 2 Type II audit cycle.
Azure Virtual Desktop administration at scale.
Bicep infrastructure-as-code experience.
Power BI Embedded capacity management.
Oracle Database or Autonomous Database on Azure.
Background supporting SaaS products in energy, utilities, or another regulated industry.
Advanced certifications such as AZ-305, AZ-400, or SC-300.

Responsibilities

Design, deploy, and maintain Azure resources, including virtual machines, App Services, container apps, batch accounts, storage accounts, file shares, and key vaults.
Build and maintain Azure networking, including VNets and subnets, site-to-site and point-to-site VPNs, private endpoints, NAT gateways for static IP requirements, and Front Door routing.
Configure and manage Azure Virtual Desktop host pools, images, scale plans, and published applications for analyst and developer workstations.
Maintain backup, monitoring, and alerting coverage across development and production environments.
Develop and maintain Terraform infrastructure as code delivered through Azure DevOps pipelines.
Build and maintain Azure DevOps pipelines for application builds, versioned deployment, and environment promotion, including service connections, self-hosted agents, and federated identity credentials.
Help development teams move build and test workloads from legacy on-premises environments into Azure.
Administer Entra ID, including user and group provisioning, conditional access, MFA, SSO integrations, and app registrations; automate monitoring of expiring secrets and certificates.
Manage Privileged Identity Management role eligibility, access reviews, and approval of elevation requests.
Administer role-based access for client-facing platforms and resolve customer authentication and MFA issues escalated through the IT case queue.
Deploy and maintain endpoint security tooling, including Microsoft Defender for Endpoint.
Provide evidence, control descriptions, and technical input for SOC 2 Type II audits and customer security assessments, and advise on audit scope for newly production-hosted systems.
Support client onboarding and migrations, including storage access, VPN connectivity, and third-party integrations.
Serve as an escalation point for platform incidents affecting internal users and hosted clients.
Maintain network diagrams and hosting documentation as environments change, and lead internal cross-training sessions on Azure architecture.
Provide weekly status updates on priorities, progress, and blockers.