Junior Cloud Engineer

SmartSearch’s distinctive Anti‑Money Laundering verification software protects our clients by offering the most advanced and comprehensive features available from an AML provider. SmartSearch has grown rapidly by fostering an incredibly collaborative and supportive culture. As we continue our ambitious growth plans, we will strive to remain a truly exciting, rewarding, and unique place to work. We are looking for a Cloud Engineer who will be responsible for designing, building, and maintaining secure, scalable, and cost‑effective cloud infrastructure to support our applications and services. This role focuses on cloud platform engineering, infrastructure automation, and enabling development teams to deploy and operate workloads efficiently in the cloud. Reporting directly to the Head of Cloud Engineering, you will work independently while collaborating closely with software engineers, SREs, and operations teams. You will be responsible for implementing infrastructure as code, supporting CI/CD pipelines, and ensuring cloud environments follow best practices for security, resilience, and performance. Continuous learning and ongoing improvement of cloud platforms and tooling will be a key expectation of this role. Varied Day To Day Responsibilities * Designing, building, and maintaining cloud infrastructure to support business‑critical services * Implementing and maintaining infrastructure as code for repeatable, auditable deployments * Supporting and improving CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and application delivery * Ensuring cloud environments are secure, resilient, and aligned with best practices * Working closely with development teams to enable efficient deployment and operation of workloads * Managing and maintaining Kubernetes clusters and cloud‑native services * Implementing monitoring, logging, and alerting in collaboration with SRE teams * Supporting capacity planning, scaling strategies, and cost optimisation initiatives * Troubleshooting and resolving cloud infrastructure issues in production environments * Producing clear documentation for cloud architecture, operational processes, and best practices * Contributing to continuous improvement of cloud platforms, tooling, and engineering standards What are we looking for in a candidate? * Strong experience designing, building, and operating cloud infrastructure in production environments * Strong experience with cloud platforms, particularly Azure * Proficiency with infrastructure as code (IaC) tools such as Terraform, Bicep, or Ansible * Good understanding of cloud networking concepts, including VNETs, routing, firewalls, load balancing, and private connectivity * Experience working with container platforms such as Kubernetes and container registries * Experience supporting and improving CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and application deployments * Understanding of cloud security principles, identity and access management, and compliance best practices * Ability to implement reliable backup, recovery, and disaster recovery strategies * Good written and verbal communication skills, with a strong standard of English * Desire to continuously learn and stay current with evolving cloud technologies Advantages * 2–3 years’ experience in a Cloud Engineer, Platform Engineer, DevOps, or similar role * Experience with Azure‑native services such as AKS, App Services, Azure SQL, Azure Storage, and Azure Monitor * Familiarity with observability and monitoring tools such as Grafana, Prometheus, or cloud‑native equivalents * Understanding of modern application architectures, including microservices and event‑driven systems * Working knowledge of GitOps workflows and deployment strategies * Strong automation and scripting skills using Bash, PowerShell, Python, or Go * Experience managing cloud costs and implementing cost optimisation strategies * Exposure to multi‑environment setups (dev, test, staging, production) * Understanding of reliability, availability, and performance considerations in cloud platforms What is life like at SmartSearch? * We are a multi‑award winning Tech company with an aspirational mentality * Some of our most recent recognitions include: named in the renowned RegTech100 list for 2024, listed in the Top 100 Fasted Growing Tech Companies by Northern Tech Awards 2024 as well as being named Technology Provider of the Year by Corporate Finance Awards 2024 * We have been Great Place To Work Certified since 2022 * There are excellent progression opportunities due to our growth and you will have personal development goals, regular feedback and support * We are a diverse and inclusive team committed to promoting Diversity & Inclusion and Social Responsibility. Through our DE&I group, charitable initiatives and support for local schools, we actively foster a positive Impact on our community Company Benefits Our comprehensive benefit package includes: * 25 days holiday rising to 30 with each year of service * Private Medical Insurance covering dental and optical * Company pension scheme * Life Assurance – 4x your annual salary * 1 day paid volunteering per year * Enhanced maternity / paternity offerings * Employee Assistance Programme * Cycle to work scheme * On site gym J-18808-Ljbffr