Head of Cloud (Azure)

Requirements

• Several years leading Cloud or Platform Engineering teams, with significant Azure-at-scale experience
• Azure networking: hub-and-spoke, VNets, VPNs, NSGs, ASGs, firewalls, DNS, ExpressRoute, hybrid connectivity
• Designing, building, and operating secure, scalable Azure platforms (AKS, Azure Functions, managed PaaS)
• Infrastructure as Code with Terraform and Helm, including IaC best practices and governance
• Proven cloud migration and modernisation programmes (legacy VM → cloud-native)
• Azure security: Key Vault, Managed Identities, RBAC, Microsoft Defender for Cloud, Azure Policy, Microsoft Entra ID
• Observability and monitoring (Azure Monitor, Application Insights, Prometheus, Grafana, PagerDuty) and FinOps/cost-accountability practices across engineering teams
• Strong grasp of SLIs, SLOs, and error budgets
• Developing technical strategies for a cloud/infrastructure discipline and gaining senior-stakeholder buy‑in; giving clear, actionable direction in complex situations to keep teams aligned
• Exceptional communication — translating technical direction for non‑technical stakeholders — and a natural coaching/mentoring style
• If you've led cloud teams through significant modernisation programmes, built secure and scalable Azure platforms, and can turn infrastructure into a competitive advantage, this is the most impactful cloud leadership role in UK automotive
• (Desirable) WAF technologies — Azure Application Gateway, Azure Front Door, or third‑party (Cloudflare, Akamai)
• (Desirable) Azure data services — Data Lake Storage, Databricks, AI Search, Cosmos DB, PostgreSQL Flexible Server
• (Desirable) Container networking and service mesh (e.g., Istio), plus Azure Container Registry
• (Desirable) Azure messaging — Service Bus, Event Grid, Event Hubs
• (Desirable) CI/CD pipelines — Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions
• (Desirable) API Management platforms — e.g. Azure APIM
• (Desirable) Azure certifications

What the job involves

• Lead Cazoo's Azure cloud transformation: build a secure, scalable platform; lead a talented team; partner with product and business to turn infrastructure into competitive advantage
• Reports To: Liam Bennett, Director of Technology
• A senior leadership role owning the strategy, reliability, and evolution of our entire Azure estate — infrastructure, networking, cloud security, budget management, and platform engineering
• You'll report to the Director of Technology, manage a team of Cloud Engineers, and own the platform underpinning our consumer‑facing products, data platform, and internal tooling
• The estate runs a hub‑and‑spoke landing zone, AKS‑hosted microservices, event‑driven architectures, and a growing Databricks data platform, and we're migrating off a legacy VM estate toward cloud‑native services
• You'll balance perfection against expediency to meet business needs, embedding yourself across technology, product, and commercial — setting expectations, building trust, and striking the right balance between short‑and‑long‑term goals

Strategy & Leadership

• Define and own a 3–5 year cloud strategy for Cazoo across infrastructure, networking, security, and platform engineering
• Drive migration from the legacy VM estate to a cloud‑native platform (AKS, Azure Functions, managed services)
• Design and maintain the Azure Landing Zone — hub‑and‑spoke topology, subscription management, and governance policies
• Partner with Product, Commercial, and Engineering leadership so cloud accelerates business outcomes; represent Cloud & Security on the Technology Management Team, shaping strategy, culture, and ways of working
• Manage cloud budgets, drive FinOps, and oversee third‑party vendor relationships
• Drive adoption of AI‑assisted engineering, automation, and self‑service platform capabilities that improve developer productivity and operational efficiency

Platform & Infrastructure

• Deep expertise designing and operating secure Azure networking architectures, including hybrid connectivity, segmentation, routing, ingress and identity‑aware access patterns
• Ensure secure, scalable operation across AKS, Azure Functions, and remaining VM workloads
• Own infrastructure‑as‑code with Terraform and Helm, ensuring consistency and repeatability across environments
• Champion DevSecOps and security‑by‑design with InfoSec, enforcing Zero Trust, compliance, and threat mitigation
• Maintain observability (Azure Monitor, Prometheus, Grafana, PagerDuty) and operational excellence through incident management, on‑call, and continuous reliability improvement

People & Culture

• Lead, mentor, and grow a high‑performing Cloud team, foster an engineering culture of feedback, continuous learning, and technical excellence
• Give feedback, recognise great work, and support career development; own and improve team engagement scores
• Provide technical leadership and mentorship across the wider technology organisation, not just the Cloud team
• Bring a calm, steadying presence during incidents and high‑pressure periods, and foster an architectural mindset across cloud and infrastructure teams