Head of Cloud Platforms - Azure

The Head of Systems Engineering for Cloud Platform Engineering is responsible for architecting, designing and building the public cloud infrastructure platforms used by Tesco Technology. 

To be successful you will need to pull together the many different demands from our DevOps and infrastructure teams and deliver first class solutions that wow our colleagues and help Technology to accelerate our business. 

Tesco relies on the public cloud to power many of our systems and APIs and this team is responsible for creating the landing zones, services and methods used by those teams when they deploy into Azure. 

The successful applicant will lead a small internal team based in the UK and India, manage several third parties and set the agenda for the public cloud within Technology. 

• Manage activities of members of the systems engineering job family, building a team culture for continuous improvement and environment where engineers want to work.
• Ensure the team meets the required quality standards, commitments and objectives as defined in the acceptance criteria and definitions of done for all tasks undertaken.
• Define, recruit and build a global team including ways of working, skills required and location strategy, setting out the road map and development needs for the team of the future.
• Manage team performance and support team development and capabilities by defining training plans, objectives and providing feedback.
• Develop you and your team’s careers.
• Drive adoption of new tools and techniques being able to understand their value and impact.
• Keep your technical skills up to date and keep track of new technologies, processes, understanding how they might benefit the Technology team and wider Tesco.
• Design solutions to meet the required service levels, quality and functionality, retaining ultimate accountability for those systems meeting the requirements.
• Contribute to the Architecture forum, ensuring that business projects are delivered using good infrastructure practices.
• Understand current application development techniques and their implications when leading the design of Infrastructure/Systems.
• Work with the Procurement teams to source suppliers and partners for technology, deployment and ongoing support services.
• Create documentation and procedures and hand over new systems to Infrastructure Service and Operations.
• Managing stakeholder communication and escalations.
• Represent the Infrastructure/systems department across all of Technology.

Product and Architecture

The person performing this role leads the Cloud Platform Engineering (CPE) team, who are responsible for Tesco’s Azure constructs.  The CPE team scopes, specifies, builds and assists with operating all of the Infrastructure delivered public cloud products.  Specific responsibilities for this role include;

• Architectural approach of the Azure public cloud
• Specification of Azure products and services offered to Tesco’s internal customers
• Design and implementation of shared code and shared infrastructure services, used by colleagues in the rest of Technology
• The cost model; including costs of the architectural approach and providing recommendations to colleagues in Technology how to optimise costs
• The Azure security model
• Assisting teams migrating away from AWS to Azure or internal private cloud offerings
• Leading a team of Systems Engineers and Software Developers who are able to provide subject matter expertise
• Commercial acumen and ability to negotiate with Microsoft and other suppliers
• Communicating to and influencing senior stakeholders, team leaders and individual contributors

Experience relevant for this job

• Experience of leading Public Cloud (Azure) Infrastructure Engineering teams
• Previous experience working in a DevOps environment and building teams to deliver system engineering solutions in an automated way.
• Experience at optimising teams to deliver solutions to complex problems at pace.

Skills relevant for the job

• Stakeholder management.
• People management.
• Technical skills as appropriate to specialism.
• Agile working practices.

Key people and teams I work within and outside of Tesco

• Product Managers.
• Software Development Engineers.
• System Engineering Managers.
• Technical Programme Managers.
• Colleagues and business stakeholders across Tesco.
• Suppliers and 3rd parties.

People, budgets and other resources I am accountable for in my job

• Line management responsibility for the Cloud Platform Engineering team.

We offer excellent benefits that help make Tesco a great place to work!  These include but are not limited to:

• Annual bonus scheme of up to 45% of base salary
• Car allowance of £7320 per annum
• Holiday starting at 25 days plus a personal day (and bank holidays)
• Private medical insurance offered through Bupa
• Retirement savings plan – save anything from 6% of your pay and Tesco will pay 1.5 x your contribution up to 15% of your pay
• Life Assurance at 5x contractual pay
• Buy as you earn and Save as you earn share schemes