Azure Platform Engineer

Role Summary

We are seeking an Azure Platform Engineer to lead the design and ongoing ownership of the Azure foundation supporting a multi-year municipal modernization program.

This role helps to oversee Azure environment structure, CI/CD standards, and infrastructure-as-code strategy. All cloud resources must be provisioned and managed via IaC to ensure repeatability, auditability, and compliance across the program.

This is a hands-on engineering role with platform ownership responsibilities. Application engineers will rebuild business logic; this role ensures the cloud foundation they deploy into is secure, standardized, auditable, and production-ready.

Key Responsibilities

• Platform Architecture & Environment Ownership
• Establish and manage dev, test, and production environments with strict separation
• Define secure networking, identity, and role-based access boundaries
• Configure VNETs, NSGs, private endpoints, and hybrid connectivity (VPN / ExpressRoute)
• Establish standardized patterns for App Services, Azure SQL, storage, and shared services
• Define platform standards to be used consistently across consolidated applications

CI/CD & Deployment Standards

• Design and maintain standardized CI/CD pipelines in Azure DevOps
• Develop reusable pipeline templates and release patterns
• Implement approval gates, rollback strategies, and deployment controls aligned to audit requirements
• Ensure consistent deployment practices across application teams
• Ensure all infrastructure deployments are executed through CI/CD pipelines using IaC templates (no manual provisioning)

Infrastructure as Code

• All infrastructure must be provisioned and maintained via Terraform or Bicep
• Establish IaC as the only approved deployment mechanism for cloud resources
• Enforce code review, version control, and change traceability for all infrastructure changes
• Prevent manual configuration drift across environments

Security, Compliance & Observability

• Embed FedRAMP Moderate–aligned controls into platform design
• Implement centralized logging, monitoring, and retention policies
• Configure Azure Policy and Defender for Cloud guardrails
• Implement secrets and certificate management using Azure Key Vault
• Establish audit traceability for infrastructure and deployment changes
• Support disaster recovery and business continuity planning and testing

Operational Excellence

• Support production deployments and release windows
• Troubleshoot infrastructure and pipeline issues
• Define and maintain platform standards and operational runbooks
• Implement cost governance and resource optimization strategies

Required Qualifications

• A Bachelors’ degree in a related field, along with at least 5 years' experience in DevOps, platform engineering, or cloud infrastructure
• Strong hands-on Azure experience in regulated or audit-sensitive environments
• Experience with Azure DevOps CI/CD pipeline design
• Demonstrated ownership of enterprise-scale Infrastructure-as-Code programs (Terraform), including governance and enforcement of IaC-only deployment standards
• Experience embedding compliance and security controls into cloud platforms
• Working knowledge of FedRAMP Moderate or comparable compliance frameworks

Preferred

• Experience supporting municipal or public sector programs
• Experience leading on-premises to Azure migrations
• Azure certifications (Administrator, DevOps Engineer, Architect)

Other Info

• This position may require infrequent though unlikely travel (to client sites).
• Team members must be able to accommodate a working schedule of 8:30am - 5:30p EST Monday through Friday.
• No agencies, please: unsolicited agency communications will be blocked, unsolicited candidate profiles will be considered direct applicants.

• Applicants must be authorized to work in the U.S. without the need for employment-based visa sponsorship now or in the future. Alpha will not sponsor applicants for U.S. work visa status for this opportunity (no sponsorship is available for H-1B, L-1, TN, O-1, E-3, H-1B1, F-1, J-1, OPT, CPT or any other employment-based visa)
• Contractor may be hired as W2 through a Partner agency.
• Contract is expected to be approx. 6 months.

Pay Information

There are a wide range of factors that are considered in making compensation decisions including but not limited to - skill sets, experience and training, and licensure and certifications. A reasonable estimate of the pay rate is $75 - $90/hr (subject to change).