Azure Cloud Engineer

Cloud Engineer

Platform Engineering | Tech@Lilly | Eli Lilly and Company

Position Summary

The Cloud Engineer is responsible for designing, implementing, and maintaining secure, scalable, and reliable cloud-based solutions. This role supports business objectives by optimizing cloud infrastructure, automating deployments, and ensuring compliance with security and performance standards.

Key Responsibilities

Cloud Architecture & Infrastructure

• Design and deploy cloud architectures on Microsoft Azure that meet performance, security, availability, and cost-efficiency requirements for a diverse portfolio of enterprise and research applications.
• Architect and implement cloud networking, compute, storage, and identity constructs with security built in from the outset — applying least-privilege principles, network segmentation, encryption, and defense-in-depth across every layer.
• Evaluate and recommend cloud services, architectural patterns, and infrastructure approaches; build evidence-based adoption cases that account for engineering capability, operational cost, and long-term platform sustainability.

Automation & Deployment

• Implement and maintain infrastructure-as-code (IaC) frameworks using Terraform, Ansible, Bicep, ARM templates, or equivalent — making infrastructure provisioning repeatable, auditable, and developer-friendly.
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for cloud infrastructure and application deployments; ensure changes are tested, validated, and deployed safely with automated rollback capability.
• Drive automation of operational tasks — patching, scaling, monitoring, alerting, and cost optimization — reducing manual intervention and improving platform reliability and response time.

Security & Compliance

• Ensure cloud environments comply with Lilly's security standards, regulatory requirements, and data governance policies; implement and maintain controls for identity management, secrets management, audit logging, and encryption at rest and in transit.
• Monitor cloud security posture continuously; identify and remediate misconfigurations, drift, and policy violations — integrating CSPM tooling into operational workflows for proactive compliance management.
• Partner with Cybersecurity teams to align cloud platform security with enterprise threat models and applicable regulatory frameworks including GxP, 21 CFR Part 11, HIPAA, and SOX where relevant.

Optimisation & Operational Excellence

• Monitor cloud environments for performance, availability, and cost efficiency; proactively identify waste, right-size resources, and drive FinOps practices that deliver cloud value without unnecessary spend.
• Contribute to platform engineering standards, reference architectures, and guardrails that simplify how development teams consume cloud infrastructure correctly and consistently.
• Troubleshoot and resolve cloud infrastructure issues with urgency and precision; contribute to post-incident analysis and implement preventive improvements that reduce recurrence.

Basic Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field — or equivalent professional experience.
• 3+ years of hands-on cloud engineering experience in a production enterprise environment (Microsoft Azure required).
• Demonstrated proficiency with infrastructure-as-code tools (Terraform, Ansible, Bicep, ARM templates, or equivalent) and version control (Git).
• Proficiency in scripting languages (Python, Bash, or equivalent) for automation and tooling development.
• Strong understanding of cloud networking, virtualization, containerization (Docker, Kubernetes), and cloud security principles.
• Experience with CI/CD pipelines and DevOps practices in a cloud-native context.

Preferred Qualifications

• Microsoft Azure certification strongly preferred — Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Azure Administrator Associate, or Azure DevOps Engineer Expert.
• Experience with FinOps practices and cloud cost optimization at enterprise scale.
• Familiarity with monitoring and observability platforms (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, Azure Monitor, Application Insights, or equivalent).
• Experience in pharmaceutical, healthcare, life sciences, or other regulated industries — particularly with GxP, 21 CFR Part 11, or HIPAA cloud compliance requirements.
• Experience with Kubernetes in production (Azure Kubernetes Service / AKS or self-managed) including cluster operations and workload management.

Background in cloud security architecture

IAM design, secrets management, network security groups, and cloud-native security tooling.

What You Should Bring

• Deep, hands-on cloud expertise — you build and operate production cloud infrastructure, and you hold yourself accountable for its reliability, security, and cost.

Infrastructure-as-code as a default practice

you write Terraform or equivalent as naturally as you use the cloud console, and you understand why that matters for consistency, auditability, and scale.

• A security-conscious engineering mindset — you design with least privilege, defense in depth, and compliance requirements built in from the start, not retrofitted under pressure.

A cost-conscious approach

you care about what cloud resources cost, you design systems that deliver value without unnecessary spend, and you proactively surface optimization opportunities.

• The communication skills to work effectively with developers who need platform guidance and business stakeholders who need to understand cloud investment decisions — and to adjust your language for each.