Senior Azure Cloud Engineer

ASM Research•Washington, DC

23h

About The Position

The Senior Azure Cloud Engineer will serve as the program’s deep Azure technical expert for a federal agency’s transition from Azure VMware Solution (AVS) to native Azure. The role designs the post-AVS target state, evaluates Azure-native services as replacements for existing legacy and third-party platforms, develops cost models for budget submissions, and shapes an 18–24 month cloud roadmap. Initial analysis includes evaluating Application Gateway, Front Door, and Load Balancer as alternatives to F5. The engineer assesses the current environment, evaluates and prototypes candidate services in non-production, and develops decision-ready recommendations for the Infrastructure Engineering Lead, program leadership, and government stakeholders. The work focuses on architecture and analysis rather than ticket queues or team management. The engineer partners with network, systems, and security teams to ensure designs are operable, provides expert guidance on complex Azure issues, and shares technical knowledge with other engineers. The role also documents operational impacts of design decisions, including monitoring, patching, backup, disaster recovery, and runbooks, and advises on the skills operations teams will need as the organization moves toward cloud platform management. Deliverables include technical designs, options analyses, recommendation memos, roadmaps, and change records suitable for government review.

Requirements

Bachelor’s degree or equivalent relevant work experience.
U.S. citizenship and ability to obtain and maintain a Public Trust clearance.
At least 8 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.
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 the ability to discuss technical issues with engineers and present recommendations to program leadership and government stakeholders.
Ability to translate complex technical options into clear business terms and written deliverables suitable for government review.

Nice To Haves

Master’s degree.
Experience migrating from on-premises VMware vSphere, ESXi, or vCenter, Azure VMware Solution, or a comparable platform.

Responsibilities

Design the post-AVS target state and develop and compare target-state options for moving workloads to native Azure services.
Assess the current environment and evaluate Azure-native services as replacements for existing legacy and third-party platforms.
Research and prototype candidate Microsoft services in non-production, then turn findings into decision-ready recommendations.
Evaluate Azure application delivery services, including Application Gateway, Front Door, and Load Balancer, as alternatives to F5.
Identify decision points, dependencies, risks, workload sequencing, and cutover considerations for migration planning.
Shape an 18–24 month cloud roadmap and provide technical inputs that align it with agency planning and budget cycles.
Develop and maintain the AVS-versus-native-Azure cost model, identify near-term savings, and support budget submissions with defensible projections.
Document operational impacts of design decisions, including monitoring, patching, backup, disaster recovery, and runbooks.
Advise on the operational skills needed as teams shift from traditional networking and virtualization to cloud platform management.
Provide expert guidance on complex Azure issues and share knowledge with engineers.
Partner with network, systems, and security teams to ensure designs can be operated in practice.
Produce technical designs, options analyses, recommendation memos, roadmaps, and change records suitable for government review.