Head of Cloud Services

Head of Cloud Services

Department: Ampa Group Services - Chief Information Office - Technology Operations - Infrastructure - 9313

Employment Type: Permanent - Full Time

Location: Flexible

Reporting To: Rob Earl

Reporting To - Group Head of Technology Operations and Security

Location - Hybrid

Employment Type - Permanent and Full-time

Direct Reports - Cloud Engineering Team (incl. Senior/Principal Cloud Engineers)

Stakeholders - Technical Architects, Information Security, Applications Development, PMO, Vendor Partners, Finance/Procurement, Risk & Compliance

About Ampa Group:
Ampa is a group of legal and professional services brands with a shared purpose – to unlock potential. For our people, our clients, our investors and our places. Each of our seven brands have the autonomy and empowerment to do what is right for their local community and market, with the backing and buying power of a national group to really make an impact.

We are successful, purposeful and profitable - and help our clients do the same. In it together and in it for the long term, we are changing the world of business for good. As we continue to scale we are now seeking an experienced Head of Cloud Services.

Role

Purpose:

The Head of Cloud Services owns, defines, and continually matures the organisation’s Cloud capabilities. Leading the Cloud Centre of Excellence (CCoE), this role provides strategic direction, technical leadership, and operational excellence across Microsoft Azure. You will lead a high performing small team of Cloud Architects and Cloud Engineers to design, deliver, secure, and operate scalable, resilient, cost effective Cloud platforms and services across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS.

You will champion Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), Dev Sec Ops  practices, and policy driven governance, collaborating closely with Technical Architects, Information Security experts, and Application Development teams to enable safe, rapid delivery and measurable business value.

This is a senior expert role suited to candidates with 10+ years of Cloud leadership and engineering experience in enterprise environments.

This is a senior expert role suited to candidates with 10+ years of Cloud leadership and engineering experience in enterprise environments.

Success Profile (First 12 Months)

• A clear, board aligned Cloud Strategy & Roadmap, with target architecture and operating model baselined.
• Enterprise Azure Landing Zone established/enhanced, with policy-as-code guardrails and environment standards.
• Fin Ops model operational (tagging, budgeting, forecasting, optimisation cadence, showback/chargeback as appropriate).
• Core resilience & DR patterns defined and tested for business critical services.
• Improved reliability and lead time for changes (e.g., reduced MTTR, higher deployment frequency, lower change fail rate).
• A skilled, motivated Cloud Engineering team with clear skills matrix, development plans, and delivery cadence.

Strategic Leadership & CCoE

• Lead the Cloud Centre of Excellence, setting standards, patterns, and the Cloud adoption roadmap.
• Define and maintain the Cloud Target Operating Model (roles, skills, processes, RACI).
• Align Cloud strategy with Technology Operations, Security, Architecture, and business objectives.

Cloud Architecture & Engineering

• Own end to end Cloud capabilities - architecture, engineering, automation, operations, observability, lifecycle mgmt.
• Drive IaC-first delivery (Terraform) and automated configuration, using modules, pipelines, and reusable patterns.
• Guide solution design to achieve scalability, resilience, performance, security, and cost efficiency across IaaS/PaaS/SaaS.

Cloud Operations & Service Management

• Deliver reliable, performant platforms with mature monitoring, alerting, incident/problem/change processes integrated with ITSM.
• Define and manage SLAs, SLOs, and OLAs, ensuring service health and capacity planning.
• Ensure effective observability (Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, App Insights) and continuous improvement.

Security & Dev Sec Ops

• Partner with Information Security to embed secure-by-design principles and shift-left practices.
• Integrate automated guardrails (e.g., Azure Policy, Defender for Cloud), vulnerability management, secrets management (Key Vault).
• Ensure compliance with relevant standards (e.g., ISO 27001, NIST, CIS Benchmarks) and regulatory obligations (e.g., GDPR, data residency/sovereignty).
• Dev Sec Ops  practices embedded (shift left security, automated controls, CI/CD gates).

Fin Ops & Cloud Cost Management

• Own Cloud financial governance - tagging strategy, budgeting, forecasting, and optimisation (e.g., reservations, savings plans, rightsizing).
• Partner with Finance to implement showback/chargeback (where appropriate) and communicate Cloud economics to stakeholders.
• Track and report cost KPIs, ensuring value realisation and cost transparency.

Resilience, DR & Business Continuity

• Define and test resilience patterns, backup/restore, RTO/RPO objectives, and application DR runbooks.
• Ensure…