Senior DevOps Engineer (Azure)

Position overview

We are looking for a seasoned, independent DevOps Engineer to lead the infrastructure migration of our core platform from AWS to Microsoft Azure. This is a fast-paced, up to 6-month contract. You will have full ownership of the migration strategy, automation setup, and final handoff. We need someone who has executed cloud-to-cloud migrations before, understands the typical architectural pitfalls, and can jump straight into the project without needing a ramp-up period. Our goal is a secure, stable, scalable, and cost-efficient Azure environment built to modern engineering standards.

Responsibilities

• Map our existing AWS footprint (EKS, S3, SQS, Cognito, Lambda, MongoDB, PostgreSQL, CloudWatch) and design a practical migration path to Azure, including cutover and rollback plans.
• Migrate our workloads from EKS to AKS and move storage, databases, messaging and serverless components to their Azure equivalents with minimal downtime.
• Write clean, reusable Infrastructure as Code (Terraform or Bicep) so environments are easy to spin up and maintain.
• Refactor and optimize CI/CD pipelines so applications ship reliably into Azure.
• Build with a security-first approach: network isolation, secret management (Azure Key Vault) and access control via Entra ID.
• Set up monitoring, alerting and cost controls before go-live.
• Work closely with our Java developers, who handle application-level changes, on deployment and troubleshooting.
• Create practical documentation and run a structured walkthrough with our internal team before wrapping up.
• Provide regular progress updates to stakeholders on migration milestones and architectural roadblocks.

Requirements

• Proven experience migrating live production workloads from AWS to Azure with minimal downtime.
• Kubernetes: EKS to AKS migration, Helm, ingress, autoscaling (HPA, KEDA), GitOps (Argo CD or Flux), ACR.
• Data: S3 to Azure Blob Storage; MongoDB to Cosmos DB for MongoDB (or Atlas on Azure); PostgreSQL to Azure Database for PostgreSQL Flexible Server, with live replication and cutover.
• Messaging and serverless: SQS to Azure Service Bus; Lambda to Azure Functions.
• Identity: Cognito to Microsoft Entra ID / Entra External ID, including user migration and OIDC flow changes.
• Advanced IaC with Terraform or Bicep (modules, remote state, policy-as-code) integrated into CI/CD (Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions).
• Security: hub-and-spoke networking, Private Endpoints, Key Vault, Managed Identities, least-privilege RBAC, Defender for Cloud.
• Observability with Azure Monitor, Log Analytics and Application Insights.
• Scripting in Bash, PowerShell or Python, plus Azure CLI.
• Active Azure certification such as AZ-305 or AZ-400 (AZ-104, AZ-500, CKA/CKAD are an asset).

Additional skills

• Cloud Adoption Framework / landing zone setup.
• Azure Migrate or similar assessment tooling.
• Experience with Cosmos DB RU sizing and MongoDB API compatibility.
• Experience with regulated environments (SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPAA).