Johannesburg North: Cloud Engineer posted by Network Finance

About the Role

Network Finance is seeking an experienced Cloud Engineer to join their team in Johannesburg North. The ideal candidate will be responsible for designing and implementing scalable cloud infrastructure, ensuring security and governance, and automating deployment processes. This role requires strong expertise in cloud platforms, containerization, and scripting.

Key Responsibilities

• Design and implement scalable cloud infrastructure for data lakes and analytics platforms using Infrastructure as Code (Terraform)
• Define reusable, modular infrastructure patterns for repeatable deployments across environments
• Implement identity and access management (IAM / Microsoft Entra ID) with least-privilege principles
• Design secure network architectures using VPC/VNet, Private Link, and endpoint-based access
• Enforce data governance standards using tools such as Unity Catalog
• Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines for infrastructure and data platform components
• Automate provisioning of compute, workspaces, and platform services
• Enable policy-as-code and automated compliance checks within deployment workflows
• Implement monitoring and alerting for performance, reliability, and cost efficiency of data workloads
• Establish dashboards and controls for usage optimisation and capacity planning
• Create self-service infrastructure capabilities for Data Engineering teams
• Enable seamless deployment of pipelines without direct infrastructure dependency
• Support standardised patterns for scalable data product delivery

Requirements

• Minimum 5+ years of professional cloud engineering experience
• Strong exposure to data engineering environments and platforms (Databricks highly desirable)

Skills & Experience

### Core Competencies

#### Infrastructure as Code

• Advanced expertise in Terraform (modules, state management, workspaces)
• Exposure to CloudFormation, Bicep, or Crossplane is beneficial

#### Containers & Orchestration

• Strong experience with Docker and Kubernetes (EKS, AKS, or equivalent)

#### CI/CD & Version Control

• Advanced Git practices
• Experience with Azure DevOps and GitHub Actions for infrastructure automation and policy enforcement

#### Scripting & Automation

• Strong proficiency in Python and Bash
• Experience with AWS CLI, Azure CLI, DBX CLI, and REST APIs

#### Security Engineering

• Role-based access control (RBAC), least privilege design
• Encryption in transit and at rest
• Secrets management (Key Vault / Secrets Manager)

#### Networking

• Design and implementation of VPC/VNet architectures
• Private connectivity (Private Link/Endpoints), DNS, firewalls, and segmentation strategies

#### Data Platform Architecture

• Understanding of Medallion architecture, Delta Lake, and Data Vault concepts

#### Observability

• Cost monitoring, logging (CloudWatch / Azure Monitor), and alerting frameworks

#### Data Workload Awareness

• Familiarity with Spark, PySpark, SQL, dbt, and streaming workloads (e.g. Spark Structured Streaming)

Platform Expertise

### AWS

• Storage: Advanced S3 configuration (lifecycle policies, access points, intelligent tiering)
• Identity: IAM role design, cross-account access, federation
• Networking: VPC architecture, Transit Gateways, Route53, Gateway Endpoints
• Serverless: Lambda and Step Functions automation
• Data Services: Glue, Kinesis, EMR

### Azure

• Storage: ADLS Gen2 (ACLs, hierarchical namespace), Blob Storage
• Identity: Microsoft Entra ID, service principals, managed identities
• Networking: VNets, NSGs, Private Link architectures
• Data Services: Azure Data Factory, Synapse integration

### Databricks Platform Engineering

• Workspace provisioning using Terraform provider
• Unity Catalog setup (metastores, catalogs, external locations)
• Cluster policies, instance profiles, and cost controls
• Secure connectivity (Private Link, VNet injection, IP access controls)
• Platform support for Jobs, Delta Live Tables (DLT), and orchestration tools
• Infrastructure enablement for MLflow, Mosaic AI, and Vector Search

Certifications (Nice to Have)