Infrastructure/Cloud Engineer at University of Birmingham

Closes: 25^th January 2024

This is an exciting opportunity to join one of the up-and-coming areas of IT. The University of Birmingham are working towards a new cloud strategy. Increasingly The University of Birmingham needs to operate and compete at unprecedented speeds and scale as competitors and technologies are advancing. Cloud infrastructure is the most value-creating technology of our time and is the foundation for the universities digital strategy that is driving profound changes in how the business operates, competes, and creates value for all stakeholders.

This role involves working within small team of infrastructure/cloud engineers, investigating ways to deal with legacy debt and explore moving best cloud options and technologies. It will also need to have a close working relationship with internal and external partners to review a range of existing services to determine the best infrastructure platform and upgrade path. This could include simply upgrading services on premise in our private cloud, or migration to a public cloud provider.

Main Duties

• Reviewing a wide range of existing University services to determine the best upgrade path.
• Working in tandem with several internal and external stakeholders (services owners, Core Infrastructure, 3^rd party suppliers) to identify, optimise and implement, through automation, the most appropriate infrastructure platform (private or public cloud-based) solutions for the University of Birmingham. 
• Regularly reviewing existing systems and making recommendations for improvements. 
• Identifying, analysing, and resolving infrastructure vulnerabilities and application deployment issues.
• Managing cloud services in accordance with IT Services governance & security guidelines.
• Stakeholder management, ensuring effective liaison with service owners, external partners, Project Boards as appropriate.
• Educate teams on the implementation of new cloud-based initiatives, providing associated training as required.
• Define and document best practices and strategies regarding service deployment and infrastructure maintenance.
• Milestone tracking – deliver agreed deliverables against timelines.
• Maintain an up-to-date knowledge of cloud methodologies and technologies.

Required Knowledge, Skills, Qualifications, Experience

• Qualified to Degree level (or equivalent experience in a similar role).   
• An in depth up-to-date technical knowledge of several of the following is essential
  • Windows Server
  • SQL Server Administration
  • Cloud Technologies (including Microsoft Azure SQL, Azure SQL elastic pool, Azure Compute Services, Terraform, GitHub)
• Experience of using continuous integration and continuous delivery systems for automate service deployments.
• Experience of agile methodologies and working in an agile team.
• A strong customer service orientation, showing the ability to both understand/interpret end user requirements and articulate IT solutions that deliver on end user business requirements.
• The ability to work effectively as a member of a team towards quality service goals and deadlines.
• The ability to effectively prioritise and schedule workloads.
• Excellent communication skills with both internal and external users.

Informal enquires can be made to Kuldip Sangha email: k.s.sangha@bham.ac.uk.   

To download the full job description and details of this position and submit an electronic application online please click on the above ‘Apply’ button.

Valuing excellence, sustaining investment
We value diversity and inclusion at the University of Birmingham and welcome applications from all sections of the community and are open to discussions around all forms of flexible working