SC Cleared Cloud Engineer - Milton Keynes - Outside IR35 at Solirius Limited, 2-3 days on-site Milton Keynes/hybrid, 3 Months, £Contract Rate

About Us

Solirius Reply, part of the Reply Group, is a technology consultancy and digital transformation partner that helps organisations solve complex challenges through strategy, design, engineering, and delivery.

We work closely with our clients to deliver secure, accessible, user-focused services that evolve with their needs. By combining deep technical expertise with people-centred design, we create solutions that deliver meaningful, lasting impact.

Our consultants partner directly with client teams, embedding into organisations to understand their goals, challenges, and users. This collaborative approach enables us to deliver tailored solutions that drive measurable outcomes across public and private sectors.

Past and present clients include the Ministry of Justice, Department for Education, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, UEFA, International Olympic Committee, and Mercedes-Benz. Our services span the full digital delivery life cycle, including architecture, engineering, delivery management, user-centred design, business analysis, data, DevOps, and AI.

About You

You are a motivated and adaptable professional with a strong analytical mindset and a passion for using technology to solve real-world problems. You enjoy working in collaborative, agile teams and take pride in delivering high-quality solutions that make a tangible impact. With strong communication skills and a consultative approach, you're comfortable engaging with clients, understanding their needs, and translating them into effective outcomes.

Role Overview

We are seeking an experienced, security-cleared Cloud Engineer to join our public sector platform engineering team. You will lead the design, build, and operational hardening of secure multi-cloud environments, with a primary focus on Microsoft Azure.

In this role, you will bridge infrastructure-as-code automation and proactive cloud security. A key focus will be deploying and managing Extended Detection and Response (XDR) frameworks across public sector workloads to maintain compliance with NCSC (National Cyber Security Centre) guidance and government security frameworks.

Key Responsibilities

1. Cloud Infrastructure & Platform Engineering

• Build & Maintain Azure Core: Design, deploy, and manage secure Azure Landing Zones (Management Groups, Subscription topologies, VNet hub-and-spoke models).

• Support AWS Environments: Provision and maintain core AWS workloads (VPCs, EC2, IAM, S3, AWS Organisations) in a multi-cloud configuration.

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Automate end-to-end cloud infrastructure using Terraform or Bicep.

• DevSecOps Integration: Embed automated security scanning, policy checks, and compliance validation into CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps/GitHub Actions).

2. XDR & Threat Protection

• Deploy & Operate XDR: Implement and fine-tune Extended Detection and Response capabilities across cloud tenants (eg, Microsoft Defender XDR/Sentinel integrated with AWS telemetry like GuardDuty/SecurityHub).

• Incident Triage & Response: Configure telemetry streams, set up detection rules, and automate incident response workbooks for proactive security alerting.

• Identity & Access Governance: Enforce Zero Trust architectural principles, Least Privilege access, and Entra ID (Azure AD) PIM/RBAC policies.

3. Compliance & Governance

• Public Sector Governance: Ensure all cloud architectures comply with NCSC Cloud Security Principles, ISO27001, and HMG security guidelines.

• Cost & Performance Optimisation: Apply FinOps best practices across Azure and AWS tenants to monitor and optimize public sector cloud spend.

Technical Skills

• Domain - Required Expertise
• Primary Cloud (Azure) - Deep hands-on experience with Azure core services (VNets, ExpressRoute, Azure AD/Entra ID, Key Vault, Storage, AKS/App Services).
• Secondary Cloud (AWS) - Solid working knowledge of AWS core infrastructure (VPC, IAM, EC2, S3, CloudTrail).
• XDR & Security Tools - Hands-on experience deploying and operating XDR tooling (Microsoft Defender for Cloud/Endpoint, Azure Sentinel, AWS Security Hub/GuardDuty).
• Automation & IaC - Strong proficiency with Terraform or Bicep/ARM templates.
• CI/CD & DevOps - Experience building pipelines in Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions.
• Networking & Zero Trust - Micro-segmentation, NSGs, Azure Firewall, DNS, VPN/ExpressRoute, and Zero Trust security controls.

Desirable Skills & Qualifications

• Certifications:

  • Azure: AZ-104 (Administrator), AZ-500 (Security Engineer), or AZ-305 (Solutions Architect).

  • AWS: AWS Certified Solutions Architect or AWS Certified Security - Specialist.

  • Security: SC-200 (Microsoft Security Operations Analyst) or SC-100.

• Containerisation: Practical experience with Kubernetes (AKS/EKS) and Docker.

• Public Sector Experience: Prior experience delivering projects within UK Central Government, Defence, or NHS environments under GDS (Government Digital Service) standards.