Principal Cloud Engineer (Azure)

About the role 

As a Principal Cloud Engineer, you are the senior technical authority for cloud engineering behind our large-scale SaaS platform — thousands of customer environments under stringent 24/7 availability and performance requirements. You form and drive the cloud technical strategy with the Director of Cloud & Developer Operations, and lead through expertise and influence: guiding architectural decisions, mentoring engineers, and holding coherent technical direction across teams — not owning the cloud function organisationally.

This is the most senior individual-contributor cloud role in the Deploy, Run & Optimize lane — our CloudOps and DevOps function. You lead the hardest cross-team cloud initiatives and infrastructure transformation, and you bring our AI-native ways of working into how the platform is built, operated, and remediated — agents and bounded automation with observability, approvals, containment, and rollback, not just runbooks. You are here to take our technology to the next level.

What this is not: A detached architect removed from production, or a people-management role. This is principal-level technical leadership — hands-on in the estate, setting the direction other engineers build on.

Your product lane 

You anchor in the Deploy, Run & Optimize lane, where cloud infrastructure, reliability, and optimisation live, and set technical direction across its teams:

Deploy, Run & Optimize — how TOPdesk runs

The Deploy, Run & Optimize lane — our CloudOps and DevOps function — owns how TOPdesk runs: SaaS infrastructure and SRE, environment handling, data persistence, observability, and the DevOps/DevEx that keep delivery fast and safe.

The team 

You join our SaaS platform engineering in Delft — teams of social technicians building a robust, scalable cloud platform, working to agile principles with a collaboratively managed backlog and two-week sprints. You report to the Director of Cloud & Developer Operations and set technical direction that reaches well beyond any single team.

What you'll do 

Set cloud strategy and architecture

• Form and execute the cloud technical strategy with the Director of Cloud & Developer Operations, who retains accountability for organisational priorities, budget, people, reliability outcomes, and the operating model.

• Define reference architectures, standards, and reusable patterns; guide architectural decisions and hold coherent technical direction across teams, in partnership with the Chief Architect.

• Apply Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and Well-Architected Framework (WAF) thinking; design for scalability, including the SQL data estate beneath the platform.

Drive transformation

• Take end-to-end technical ownership of infrastructure transformation projects — cloud modernisation, efficiency, and FinOps initiatives.

• Drive strategic cloud initiatives and major transformation efforts, and push the boundaries of scale, resilience, and efficiency.

• Bring AI-native operations into the lane — agents, bounded automation, and evals, with observability, approvals, containment, and rollback — so reliability and efficiency scale faster than headcount.

Lead and mentor

• Mentor engineers on architecture, best practices, and complex problem-solving.

• Lead critical technical discussions and champion innovation; strengthen cross-team collaboration.

• Define and publish standards — make implicit expectations explicit and inspectable.

Partner and operate

• Partner with business stakeholders so cloud solutions directly support TOPdesk's strategic objectives.

• Refine operational processes so we stay both agile and highly reliable, and support 24/7 continuity of service (including a shared stand-by rotation).

• Identify dependencies early and cooperate with other engineering and non-cloud teams toward shared goals.

Technical environment 

Claude Code is our current primary agentic engineering environment: agents may plan and execute within defined constraints and governed environments, while engineers stay accountable for problem framing, architecture, acceptance criteria, security, verification, and production outcomes. Agent-generated work is backed by automated tests, runtime checks, reviewable evidence, and risk-based human approval — we match deterministic automation, structured workflows, or agents to the nature and risk of the task rather than maximising autonomy for its own sake.

• Cloud: Microsoft Azure (networking, compute, storage) at multi-tenant SaaS scale; Kubernetes / Azure AKS.

• Infrastructure as code: Terraform via CI/CD; configuration management with Puppet and Ansible.

• Observability: metrics and monitoring stacks (e.g. Influx, VictoriaMetrics, Grafana, Nagios).

• Automation: Python and automation tooling — and we expect you to take the stack to the next level, not just operate today's.

• Legacy: Java, MS SQL, heritage architecture — being decomposed.

• Mechanisms: subagents, MCP tool integrations, multi-agent workflows, and shared prompt, agent, and eval libraries.

Success in your first year 

• A major infrastructure transformation is under your technical ownership and delivering — measurably better scale, resilience, or efficiency against a documented baseline.

• Architectural direction for the cloud platform is coherent across teams, with published standards engineers build on.

• Engineers you mentor are visibly stronger; you are consulted during design, not only after incidents.

• AI-native operations — agents, bounded automation, evals, with approvals and rollback — are part of how the lane runs, not a side experiment.

Required 

• At least 7 years as a cloud engineer with Azure.

• A hands-on technical leader who drives major cloud transformations and unites stakeholders around shared objectives.

• At least 3 years with Terraform via CI/CD.

• Experience with Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) and Well-Architected Framework (WAF).

• Experience setting up (SQL) databases for scalability.

• Proactive, takes initiative, and can lead; identifies dependencies early and cooperates across cloud and non-cloud teams.

• Strong communicator and team player; comfortable with an occasional stand-by shift (evenings or weekends).

Nice to have 

• Relevant Azure certifications.

• Current, personal practice of AI-native software delivery (Claude Code or equivalent) — leading adoption by example.

• Experience with EU data residency / sovereign cloud requirements.

• A track record of driving innovation and delivering meaningful technical improvements at scale.

What's in it for you 

• A strong focus on personal development

• A hybrid working environment built on freedom, trust, and responsibility.

• An open, informal, and supportive culture, with collaboration across national borders.

• Excellent employment conditions.

Want to apply? 

Does this sound like your next step? Apply with your CV and a short motivation letter via the application form. Tell us how you have driven innovation and delivered meaningful technical improvements — ideally a cloud transformation you owned end to end — and why this role interests you.