Principal Engineer & Technical Lead — Azure / Containers

Required

• 12+ years in software engineering, including 5+ years as a lead or principal engineer shipping production cloud systems.
• 4+ years building and operating containerized workloads on Kubernetes in production, preferably AKS.
• Deep, current hands-on Azure experience: you have personally built, deployed and debugged the services you work with.
• Code you can show: substantial, active C#/.NET and Python work in the last 12 months, not just reviews. You are still one of the strongest individual contributors on any team you join.
• Deep, applied command of enterprise design patterns (messaging, resilience, integration, multi-tenancy); you can explain their failure modes because you have hit them in production.
• Track record of taking a novel concept from whiteboard to working POC in weeks, then building or leading the first production slice.
• Working architecture depth across operational and analytical data stores, including event-driven and streaming implementations.
• Fluency with IaC and CI/CD; you write the Terraform and the pipeline, not just the diagram.
• Security-first implementation in a regulated environment (PCI DSS, SOC 2, or financial services equivalent).
• Proven ability to lead distributed and offshore teams through design and code reviews without direct authority.
• Clear written communication: ADRs, design docs and status summaries that stand on their own.