Cloud Platform Lead in Chester House, Epsom Ave, Handforth, Cheadle, Greater Manchester, SK9 3DF Hybrid working, with travel to the Handforth Support Office

Location: Hybrid working, with travel to the Handforth Support Office

About the Role

The Azure Cloud Platform Lead offers a unique opportunity to take technical ownership of the cloud engineering practices for the entire domain at Pets at Home, whilst operating in a leadership capacity across the organisation, and building a dedicated Cloud Engineering Team.

The role will be predominantly responsible for owning our Azure environment - build, billing, CI/CD pipelines and maintenance, operation, and monitoring of the platform. This role will also act as the Subject Matter Expert in Cloud, guiding on best practices, guidelines, recommendations on how to best leverage what Cloud already provides as Paas.

Key responsibilities will include, but are not limited to:

• ​Delivery of change to the Azure public cloud platform​
• DevOps &Platform evangelist educating the development teams, taking requirements, and shaping them to be built on top of the Platform.
• Internal consultant for the technology teams, helping them in recommending the choice of technologies and their design & architecture suitable for their problem statement.
• ​​Patch assessment, acceptance, integration, and adoption for the Azure public cloud platform
• ​Maintenance release and update assessment, acceptance, integration, and adoption for the Azure public cloud platform​
• ​​Shift left approach to enable 1st and 2nd line support and IT operations to provide effective support and minimise the use of 3rd line for the Azure public cloud platform
• ​3rd line support for the Azure public cloud platform during in operational hours and out of hours through on call structure
• ​​​Definition of a team structure and roles for the Azure cloud platform team based on business and technology requirements
• ​​Development of the Azure cloud platform team members in relation to performance and career development​​
• ​​Identification of improvement opportunities to improve the Azure cloud platform and/or the Azure cloud platform team including skills, knowledge, tooling and automation​
• ​​Representation of Azure cloud platform in business and technology forums to educate forums on the role of the Azure cloud platform, challenge where appropriate and assess the impact of planned changes ​
• Work alongside the Head of IT Service Management & Operations and peer colleagues as part of a leadership group to provide an effective IT service management and operations capability for the group
• Deputise for the Head of IT Service Management & Operations
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About your Experience

As a proven technology leader with a passion for cloud engineering and operations, you are likely to be excited by the prospect of leading and shaping a cloud platform team set for growth. You will be comfortable working as part of a wider technology leadership team, in a highly visible and business facing role.

This role requires a breadth of skills and knowledge, including:

• Experience of creating and working with design documentation
• Familiarity with working with delivery pipelines using tools like Azure DevOps for infrastructure as code in cloud-based deployments.
• ​Public cloud technology infrastructure change delivery in a large enterprise
• Public cloud technology infrastructure development and support
• Public cloud product and service principles across software as service, platform as a service and infrastructure as a service
• IT service management principles
• Engineering and software architecture design
• DevOps (including Terraform) and ARM Templating
• Supplier management
• Managing technical teams
• Public cloud technology infrastructure change delivery in a large retail / ecommerce enterprise
• Azure product and service experience

In addition, the following would be advantageous:

• Experience in managing and motivating semi-autonomous teams in an agile way.
• Previous experience as a DevOps Lead or Cloud Practice Lead managing a team to deploy and continuously deliver and enhance applications leveraging Azure DevOps for CI/CD practices.
• Previous experience of creating and deploying cloud solutions as Infrastructure as Code using ARM templates.

About Our Benefits

We have a strong and competitive benefits package in addition to the base salary.

This Includes

• 15% Bonus potential
• 28 days holiday + Bank Holidays
• Pension Scheme
• Healthcare
• Share options
• Group Discounts

Other Flexible Benefits

Far more than a retailer, Pets at Home Group is the UK’s leading pet care specialist, fulfilling every possible pet and owner need, from food and accessories to grooming and vet services. Since 1991, we’ve been building a business around pets and their owners and we’ve set our sights on becoming the best pet care business in the world. Join us now and you can be part of that journey, developing your future as we develop ours. This is a place where you can take pride and passion in your work within an inspiring, professional team that’s focused on supporting pets and their owners to live happier lives together.

About the Pets at Home Group

At Pets at Home we have an ambitious plan, to become “The Best Pet Care Business in the world” and a key part of delivering this in sustainable way will be our most cherished assets: our People and our Culture. We are a business built on strong values and behaviours which guide everything we do. These are our foundations which will help us to deliver our better world pledge to create a better world for pets and the people who love them.

The Pets at Home Group includes over 450 stores, over 310 Groom Rooms and 440 First Opinion Vet Practices. It’s fast-paced, innovative, fun and we put people at the very heart of everything we do. We are committed to developing a culture of inclusivity where everyone is able to come to work and be themselves, a culture which welcomes everyone irrespective of what makes us all unique.