Senior Azure Cloud Engineer

ASM Research•Washington, DC

About The Position

A federal agency is moving from Azure VMware Solution (AVS) to native Azure. The Senior Azure Cloud Engineer owns the technical analysis and designs for the transition, including the post-AVS target state, evaluations of Azure-native services that could replace existing platforms, a supporting cost model, and an 18–24 month cloud roadmap. Initial work includes assessing Application Gateway, Front Door, and Load Balancer as alternatives to F5 and identifying legacy or third-party platforms that Microsoft-native capabilities could replace. The role assesses the current environment, evaluates Azure services against the agency’s existing platforms, prototypes candidate services in non-production, and delivers decision-ready recommendations. Designs, options analyses, and recommendations are provided to the Infrastructure Engineering Lead, program leadership, and government stakeholders. The Infrastructure Engineering Lead sets direction and priorities; this role provides the technical depth behind those decisions. This is an architecture and analysis role rather than a ticket-queue or team-management position. The engineer partners with network, systems, and security teams to ensure designs are operationally viable and serves as an escalation point for complex Azure issues. The role also documents operational impacts such as monitoring, patching, backup, disaster recovery, and runbooks, and advises on skills operations teams may need as the environment shifts toward cloud platform management.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent relevant work experience.
U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance.
8 or more years of infrastructure engineering experience, including senior-level ownership of cloud design with Microsoft Azure as the primary platform.
Deep working knowledge of Azure compute, virtual networking, storage, Microsoft Entra ID, Azure Policy, Azure Monitor, and Cost Management, with the ability to validate designs and troubleshoot complex issues.
Experience planning or leading migrations of VMware-based workloads to Azure, including workload assessment, sequencing, and cutover planning.
Solid understanding of Azure networking, including ExpressRoute, VNets and peering, NSGs, private endpoints, load balancing, DNS, and hybrid routing.
Ability to design hybrid network topologies and evaluate replacing appliance-based load balancing with Azure-native services.
Experience designing or operating cloud infrastructure in a security- and compliance-driven environment, such as federal, FedRAMP, or a similarly regulated industry.
Working understanding of NIST 800-53 as it applies to cloud environments.
Strong communication and documentation skills, including presenting recommendations to technical teams, program leadership, and government stakeholders and translating technical options into clear business terms and written deliverables suitable for government review.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree preferred.
Experience with migrations from on-premises VMware vSphere, ESXi, or vCenter, Azure VMware Solution, or a comparable platform; the posting emphasizes migration judgment over a specific source platform.

Responsibilities

Develop and compare target-state options, identify decision points, dependencies, and risks, and plan workload transitions from AVS to native Azure services.
Provide technical inputs to keep the cloud roadmap aligned with agency planning and budget cycles.
Research, prototype, and recommend Microsoft services that can replace legacy platforms, improve service delivery, and support agency modernization goals.
Develop and maintain the AVS-versus-native-Azure cost model, identify near-term savings in the current environment, and support budget submissions with defensible projections.
Document operational impacts of design decisions, including monitoring, patching, backup, disaster recovery, and runbooks.
Advise on the skills operations teams will need as the model shifts from traditional networking and virtualization to cloud platform management.
Provide expert guidance on complex Azure issues and share knowledge with other engineers.
Produce technical designs, options analyses, recommendation memos, roadmaps, and change records suitable for government review.
Partner with network, systems, and security teams to ensure proposed designs can be operated effectively.
Prototype candidate Azure-native services in non-production and turn findings into recommendations for program and government stakeholders.