The Practice Lead – Azure is a senior leadership role that sits between technical execution and strategic leadership. As the go-to technical authority for the Azure cloud practice, you will own the overall health, growth, and direction of the practice — spanning technical excellence, people development, delivery governance, and business enablement.

This role is ideal for someone who leads from the front technically, grows people intentionally, and thinks about the practice as a business unit they own.

Responsibilities

Be the deepest technical expert within the Azure practice and the final authority on architecture decisions
Review and provide guidance on solutions designed by Azure Architects and Sr. Architects
Resolve critical technical escalations from ongoing Azure project engagements
Define and enforce technical standards, best practices, and guardrails across all Azure engagements
Drive cloud-native and well-architected approaches consistently across the practice
Identify skill gaps and execute upskilling and Azure certification plans across the team
Define career progression paths and build a high-performance, learning-driven culture within the practice
Ensure all Azure projects follow defined technical quality standards and architecture principles
Define and execute the Azure practice roadmap, including new capabilities, service offerings, and technology focus areas
Build reusable assets, including reference architectures, accelerators, templates, and runbooks
Lead and contribute to RFP/RFI responses and participate in client conversations and workshops as the Azure practice SME
Identify and support upsell and cross-sell opportunities within existing accounts
Represent the Azure practice in leadership reviews and governance forums
Report Azure practice health metrics—utilization, certifications, project quality, bench strength—to the Cloud & DevOps Entity Head
Track Azure ecosystem trends and proactively introduce emerging services into the practice

Requirements

22–26 years of overall IT experience with significant depth in Azure cloud architecture and practice leadership
Proven experience owning or building an Azure Cloud Practice or Center of Excellence (CoE) in a services or consulting environment
Strong hands-on expertise in Microsoft Azure across networking, identity and security, infrastructure, Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), Azure DevOps CI/CD and container orchestration
Proficiency in networking solutions including VNet, NSG, Azure Firewall and ExpressRoute
Solid understanding of identity and security tools such as Azure AD, Key Vault, Defender, Sentinel and Azure Policy
Deep knowledge of infrastructure strategies including IaaS, PaaS, Azure Landing Zones and hybrid architectures
Practical experience with Infrastructure-as-Code tools such as Terraform, Bicep and ARM Templates
Expertise in implementing Azure DevOps pipelines and managing tools like PowerShell and Azure CLI
Advanced skills in container solutions using AKS, Kubernetes, Helm and GitOps workflows
Demonstrated experience in leading and mentoring large multidisciplinary teams across multiple seniority levels
Proven success in pre-sales activities such as RFPs, technical proposals, client workshops and CXO-level presentations
A strong foundation in application modernization including legacy assessment, replatforming, containerization, microservices and API-first transformation on Azure
Ability to develop technical standards, governance frameworks and oversee architecture review processes
Excellent communication and interpersonal skills to collaborate with and engage confidently with CXO-level stakeholders

Nice to have

Microsoft Certified: Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ-305) — strongly preferred
Additional certifications — TOGAF, ITIL, or CKA
Exposure to multi-cloud or hybrid environments (Azure Arc, AWS, GCP)
Microsoft MVP recognition or active Azure community presence
Thought leadership — blogs, conference speaking, or open-source contributions
Exposure to FinOps and Azure cost governance practices

Director Technology Solutions - Azure Cloud