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.