Cloud and Infrastructure Platform Technical Lead

TL;DR

• Platform Technical Lead for a major outcome-based Cloud and infrastructure platform managed service
• Senior Principal/Staff-level hands-on cloud and infrastructure engineering role
• Fast-growing technology consultancy specialising in the energy sector - both renewables and oil & gas
• Aberdeen preferred; elsewhere in Scotland considered with regular travel to Aberdeen
• Technical authority for a large hybrid multi-cloud production estate
• Must have strong, hands-on, demonstrable experience operating production Windows and Linux infrastructure
• Strong Microsoft Azure and hybrid infrastructure experience also expected
• Lead T3 escalation, major incident technical response, problem management and root-cause analysis
• Provide technical assurance for complex changes and operational architecture decisions
• Broad experience across cloud, virtualisation, Windows/Linux, networking, identity, monitoring, backup and security expected
• Experience with Azure Arc, Azure VMware Solution, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Microsoft 365 tenant administration highly desirable
• Strong experience of automation, Infrastructure as Code and modern cloud operations
• Experience operating enterprise production environments through ITIL/ServiceNow processes strongly preferred
• Participate in an engineering on-call/escalation model supporting 24×7 P1/P2 incidents
• Energy sector, offshore or critical-infrastructure experience a plus
• Baseline Disclosure Scotland check required
• Background from a technology consultancy or managed service provider a plus
• Flexible working (we're very relaxed)

Who are we?

Hypercube Consulting is the leading technology partner for the energy sector. We're building a world-class team of technology experts with deep domain knowledge in all things energy - both renewables and oil & gas.

We work across cloud, infrastructure, data, AI and software, helping energy-sector organisations modernise and operate technology platforms that support genuinely important business services.

To understand more about who we are and what we do, visit our website here: Hypercube | Decision Intelligence for Energy

Role purpose

We're looking for a Platform Technical Lead to act as the senior technical authority for a major cloud infrastructure and platform managed service for an oil & gascustomer.

This is a key position within the managed service team. You will be the person our engineers turn to when an issue becomes technically complex, when a major incident needs senior technical leadership, or when an operational change carries significant technical or business risk.

This is also not an architecture role that sits above the engineering team and produces documents. You will be a senior, hands-on technical leader working alongside the Cloud and Infrastructure Platform Engineers and Cloud and Infrastructure Platform Service Engineers to operate a large enterprise production estate.

Strong hands-on Windows, Linux, Azure and AWS experience is essential for this role. We need someone who has genuinely operated this infrastructure in production and understands the realities of supporting it — complex troubleshooting, networking and connectivity, compute, identity and access, monitoring, backup and recovery, controlled change, resilience and automation.

Certification or architecture-level knowledge alone isn't enough. You need to be technically credible when an incident is escalated to you and capable of leading engineers through investigation and recovery.

You will also need strong Microsoft Azure and hybrid infrastructure experience. The wider environment is genuinely hybrid and multi-cloud, spanning Microsoft Azure, AWS, Azure VMware Solution, Azure Arc-enabled on-premises and offshore infrastructure, VMware, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Microsoft 365.

We don't expect you to personally be the deepest technical specialist in every platform. An important part of being the Technical Lead is knowing when to lead the technical response yourself, when to involve another engineer or Hypercube specialist, and when to escalate to a technology vendor.

The operating model gives the Platform Technical Lead a very clear position: you are the technical point of escalation when complexity, risk or business impact exceeds normal engineering activity.

You will lead technical response during major incidents, complex root-cause analysis and problem management, coordinate vendor escalation and provide assurance over significant operational changes. You will also set technical standards for the service and help ensure that recurring operational problems are engineered out rather than repeatedly worked around.

Good production infrastructure engineering judgement matters as much as knowledge of individual cloud services. You'll need to understand when to fix something quickly, when to stop and investigate, when a proposed change introduces unacceptable risk and when the right answer is to involve specialist expertise.

The service operates within the customer's own ServiceNow environment and existing ITIL-aligned incident, request, change, problem and knowledge-management processes. You won't be introducing a parallel support model — you'll be helping make the managed service work effectively inside the customer's established governance.

You will work closely with the Service Delivery Manager. The SDM owns overall service performance, governance and customer relationship; you own technical quality and technical leadership of the service.

You will also help develop the engineers around you. There is no requirement for this role to be a traditional people manager, but there is a strong expectation that you mentor, challenge and improve the technical capability of the team.

Key responsibilities

Technical leadership and assurance

• Act as the senior technical authority across the managed cloud and infrastructure estate
• Provide technical leadership and engineering judgement for complex or high-risk operational activity
• Review and assure significant production changes and ensure appropriate implementation, testing and rollback planning
• Ensure engineering decisions align with customer architecture, security and operational standards
• Challenge approaches that introduce unnecessary technical debt, security risk or operational complexity
• Work with customer architects and SMEs where operational engineering interfaces with strategic architecture
• Bring Hypercube specialists or technology vendors into technical decisions where deeper expertise is required

T3 escalation and major incidents

• Act as the senior T3 escalation point for the most complex cloud and platform incidents
• Lead the technical workstream during P1/P2 major incidents where senior technical leadership is required
• Establish technical hypotheses, investigation workstreams and recovery priorities
• Coordinate Cloud and Infrastructure Platform Engineers, specialist resources and technology vendors during complex incidents
• Remain technically credible and sufficiently hands-on to lead investigation across Azure, AWS and the wider hybrid environment
• Support the customer's Major Incident Manager while retaining ownership of the technical response
• Lead or assure post-incident technical reviews and ensure findings result in meaningful corrective action

Problem management and continual improvement

• Lead root-cause analysis for recurring and high-impact technical issues
• Identify systemic weaknesses across infrastructure, configuration, monitoring, operational processes and platform design
• Turn incident trends and recurring problems into engineering improvements
• Ensure permanent remediation is pursued rather than allowing repeated workarounds to become normal BAU
• Work with the SDM and engineering team to identify automation and toil-reduction opportunities
• Improve technical standards, runbooks and operational ways of working
• Maintain and prioritise a technical improvement backlog for the service

Platform engineering

• Maintain sufficient hands-on technical depth to design, review, troubleshoot and where necessary implement solutions across the multi-cloud and hybrid estate
• Provide senior technical leadership across Microsoft Azure and AWS, with particular emphasis on production operations, networking, identity, monitoring, backup, resilience and security
• Understand how cloud platforms integrate with Windows/Linux infrastructure, VMware, networking, identity and on-premises or offshore systems
• Provide technical oversight where issues cross platform boundaries rather than sitting neatly within a single technology
• Work effectively with specialists covering areas such as OCI, Azure VMware Solution, Microsoft 365 and other platform services
• Ensure operational resilience, recoverability and supportability are considered as part of technical decision-making

Automation and engineering improvement

• Set the technical direction for automation and Infrastructure as Code within the managed service
• Identify repetitive operational activity that should be automated, simplified or eliminated
• Promote Infrastructure as Code, Policy as Code and configuration-drift prevention where appropriate
• Improve monitoring, alert quality and automated remediation
• Encourage engineers to solve recurring problems through engineering rather than accepting repetitive manual activity
• Review and assure automation developed by other members of the team

Technical mentoring

• Mentor Cloud and Infrastructure Platform Engineers and Cloud and Infrastructure Platform Service Engineers
• Help engineers develop troubleshooting and diagnostic skills rather than simply escalating difficult tickets
• Provide constructive technical challenge and review engineering approaches
• Help Cloud and Infrastructure Platform Engineers become increasingly capable of independently handling complex T2/T3 issues
• Encourage documentation, knowledge sharing and cross-skilling
• Reduce dependency on individual technical specialists and single points of knowledge

Requirements

• Eligible to work in the UK
• Willing to undergo a Baseline Disclosure Scotland check as a condition of employment
• Able to attend customer site in Aberdeen when required
• Able to participate in senior technical escalation for a service providing 24×7 support for P1/P2 incidents
• Comfortable taking technical ownership during high-impact production incidents
• Comfortable making and assuring engineering decisions where changes can have significant business impact

Technical skills and experience

We're not looking for someone who can simply tick the largest number of technology boxes. We're looking for a senior engineer with deep production experience, broad infrastructure knowledge and the judgement to lead others when things become difficult.

For this role, strong hands-on production experience across both Microsoft Azure and AWS is essential.

AWS and Microsoft Azure

You should have demonstrable experience operating and supporting significant production cloud environments, including areas such as:

• Compute, storage and cloud infrastructure
• Cloud networking, routing, security and hybrid connectivity
• Identity, access management and privileged access
• Monitoring, logging and observability
• Backup, recovery and resilience
• Security and policy controls
• Troubleshooting complex production issues
• Designing and implementing controlled production changes
• Infrastructure as Code and automation

Within AWS, we would expect practical experience with core services and concepts such as EC2, VPC networking, IAM, CloudWatch and AWS backup/storage services, rather than certification-level knowledge alone.

Within Azure, experience should include a broad infrastructure estate and ideally areas such as Azure Virtual Machines, networking, Azure Monitor, Azure Backup, Entra ID, Azure Policy, Azure Arc and Azure Virtual Desktop / Nerdio.

Hybrid infrastructure

You should have strong enough infrastructure fundamentals to understand problems that extend beyond an individual cloud platform, including:

• Windows Server and Linux
• Active Directory and hybrid identity
• VMware and virtualisation
• Enterprise networking, DNS, routing, firewalls and load balancing
• Hybrid cloud connectivity
• Backup, recovery and disaster recovery

You don't need to personally be the SME in every one of these areas, but you should be able to understand the problem, challenge an engineering approach and bring in the right specialist when required.

Operational engineering and technical leadership

This is as important as individual product knowledge.

You should have strong experience of:

• Complex T3 production incident investigation
• Technical leadership during major incidents
• Root-cause analysis and problem management
• Technical assurance of complex production changes
• Monitoring and operational resilience
• Backup, restore and disaster recovery
• Patching and vulnerability remediation
• Vendor and specialist escalation
• Working within formal ITSM processes such as ServiceNow
• Mentoring and developing other technical engineers

Automation

You should be comfortable with modern infrastructure automation and have hands-on experience with several of:

• PowerShell
• Terraform or equivalent Infrastructure as Code
• AWS CLI and/or Azure CLI
• Bash or Python
• Azure DevOps, Git and CI/CD
• Policy as Code
• Automated remediation

The managed service places strong emphasis on automation, Infrastructure as Code, configuration-drift prevention, automated compliance and reducing repetitive operational work.

Additional beneficial experience

Experience with any of the following would be valuable but is not mandatory:

• Azure VMware Solution
• Azure Arc
• Oracle Cloud Infrastructure
• Microsoft 365 tenant administration
• Citrix
• Veeam, Azure Backup or AWS Backup
• Qualys
• SUSE Manager
• Containers and Kubernetes
• ServiceNow
• Critical infrastructure or offshore systems
• Energy or Oil & Gas environments
• Consultancy or managed services

Other desirable skills and experience

• Excellent troubleshooting instincts
• Ability to remain calm and structured during major incidents
• Strong engineering judgement and willingness to make technical decisions
• Ability to explain difficult technical situations clearly to senior customer stakeholders
• Comfortable constructively challenging engineers, architects, customers and vendors
• Strong written and verbal communication
• Strong documentation habits
• Ability to mentor engineers without simply solving every difficult problem for them
• Ability to balance immediate service restoration with longer-term engineering quality
• A desire to automate repetitive engineering work rather than accept it as permanent BAU
• Community contribution through blogs, talks, open-source work or similar, if desired

What's in it for you?

Hypercube is a growing technology and software company that aims to bring in the best possible talent to solve the most interesting challenges for our customers. We want to build a world-class team.

This role gives you the opportunity to take technical ownership of a substantial enterprise cloud and infrastructure environment rather than being spread thinly across dozens of small support accounts.

You'll be the senior technical authority within the managed service team while also working alongside experienced cloud, infrastructure, security, data and AI specialists from across Hypercube.

You'll have genuine influence over how the service is engineered, how recurring problems are solved, where automation is introduced and how the technical capability of the team develops.

The role provides a senior technical career path without requiring you to move into traditional people management.

We will support your training, certification and technical development, and if you want to build your professional profile through blogging, speaking, community work or open-source contribution, we'll support that too.

Benefits

• Pension
• Flexible working
• Events and community
• Private health insurance
• Health cash plan
• EV leasing scheme
• Training and events budget
• Mentorship programmes
• and more to come (we're exploring some cool stuff, watch this space)

Diversity and inclusion

Hypercube is committed to creating an inclusive environment reflective of society. We actively encourage applications from all backgrounds and experiences.

We would consider part-time, condensed hours, job-share and other flexible arrangements to secure the best possible people.