Cloud Infrastructure Engineering Principal

At AIA we've started an exciting movement to create a healthier, more sustainable future for everyone.

It's about finding new ways to not only better people's lives, but to better the communities and environments we live in. We need great Actuaries who want to be part of something bigger than finance alone. Because the better we can nurture our financial wellbeing as an organisation, the better we can support and make a difference for our customers when they need us most. By ensuring our products are well designed and priced, analysing business performance and ensuring proper management of insurance policies in-force, you're not just safeguarding AIA's financial wellbeing. You're securing a better future for the people and communities we serve - today, tomorrow and for generations to come.

If that interests you, read on.

About The Role

To deliver a secure, compliant, automated, resilient, and cost-efficient Azure cloud platform, supported by strong governance, improved observability/AIOps, and clear architecture and engineering leadership.

Key Points

1. Build and maintain secure, enterprise-grade Azure environments that meet regulatory/compliance needs.
2. Drive automation and modernization using IaC (e.g., Terraform) and modern cloud practices.
3. Ensure resilience and performance: availability, reliability, scalability, and disaster recovery.
4. Enforce governance, risk, and compliance controls (policies, guardrails, tagging, security baselines) with risk/audit alignment.
5. Improve operations via observability + AIOps and lead cost optimization and technical mentoring/DevOps culture.

Roles and Responsibilities:

Cloud Infrastructure Engineering

• Design, build, and maintain enterprise-grade, secure Azure cloud environments aligned with regulatory and compliance requirements.
• Develop infrastructure automation use cases using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) (e.g., Terraform).
• Ensure high availability, reliability, disaster recovery, and scalability of cloud platforms.
• Lead cloud modernization initiatives.
• Drive Cost optimisation initiative and assist Engineering teams in better understanding of Cloud cost levers

Governance, Risk & Compliance

• Operate within strict governance frameworks, ensuring compliance with industry standards.
• Enforce cloud governance policies, cost controls, resource tagging, and security baselines.
• Collaborate with risk, audit, and compliance teams to ensure adherence to internal and external regulations.
• Define and implement guardrails, policies (Azure Policy), and blueprints.

Observability & AIOps Integration

• Collaborate with Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) and AiOps team to improve end-to-end observability of Cloud Infrastructure
• Integrate AIOps capabilities to enable proactive incident detection, root cause analysis, and automated remediation.
• Develop SLIs/SLOs, dashboards, and alerts to ensure optimal system performance and user experience for Cloud Infrastructure.

Architecture & Engineering Alignment

• Collaborate closely with Enterprise Architects to ensure alignment with enterprise architecture standards and roadmaps.
• Contribute to architecture design reviews, solution approvals, and technology selection.
• Translate business and architectural requirements into scalable infrastructure solutions.

Innovation & Leadership

• Demonstrate innovation leadership, driving adoption of modern cloud practices, automation, and emerging technologies.
• Identify opportunities to improve efficiency through automation, AIOps, and platform engineering.
• Provide technical leadership, mentoring junior engineers and influencing engineering practices.
• Champion DevOps culture, continuous improvement, and engineering excellence.

Minimum Job Requirements:

Technical Expertise

• 8–12+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering, with strong focus on cloud (Azure preferred).
• Deep knowledge of:
• Azure services (compute, networking, storage, security, identity)
• Azure Landing Zones and enterprise-scale architecture
• Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, Bicep, ARM)
• Proven experience implementing observability solutions, especially Dynatrace or similar AIOps platforms.
• Knowledge of AliCloud would be an advantage

Governance & Regulated Environment

• Proven experience working in highly regulated environments (e.g., banking, insurance, healthcare, government).
• Strong understanding of:
• Security frameworks (e.g., NIST, CIS benchmarks)
• Cloud governance models and compliance controls
• Experience working with engineering governance frameworks and approval processes.

Architecture Collaboration

• Experience working with or supporting Enterprise Architecture functions.
• Ability to interpret and implement reference architecture and design standards.

Leadership & Soft Skills

• Demonstrated innovation leadership and ability to drive transformation initiatives.
• Strong stakeholder management and communication skills.
• Ability to operate in complex, matrixed enterprise environments.

Preferred Qualifications

• Certifications:
• Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert
• Microsoft Certified: Azure DevOps Engineer Expert
• Relevant security certifications (e.g., CISSP) are a plus
• Experience with:
• CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions)
• Container platforms (Kubernetes / AKS)
• Platform engineering and self-service cloud capabilities
• Exposure to FinOps practices and cloud cost optimization