Manager, Cloud Engineering

**About the Role** The Electronic Government Authority (EGA) is the central body responsible for driving Ras Al Khaimah's Emirate\-wide digital transformation, providing unified technology services, governance, and innovation across all RAK government departments. EGA operates in a hybrid environment with an existing Azure footprint alongside on\-premise infrastructure and a broad portfolio of SaaS applications. We are hiring a Manager of Cloud Engineering, EGA's first dedicated cloud engineering role, to define and lead the transition to a structured, secure, and strategically governed cloud environment. You will define EGA's Azure\-first cloud strategy and migration roadmap, establish cloud architecture standards and guardrails across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS, own cloud security architecture implementation, and progressively build a cloud engineering section of up to five engineers. This is a rare opportunity to define cloud direction from the ground up for a government digital authority. UAE data residency requirements shape every architectural decision, and Microsoft Azure is EGA's platform of choice given its UAE data center presence. The role reports to the Head of IT Infrastructure and operates in close partnership with Information Security, who own cloud security governance and assurance while this role owns technical implementation and remediation. **What You Will Do** * Assess EGA's current infrastructure landscape and existing Azure footprint, and define a pragmatic cloud strategy and workload migration roadmap aligned with UAE data residency requirements and EGA's technology direction. * Establish cloud architecture principles, reference patterns, and guardrails across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS to ensure cloud adoption is consistent, supportable, and secure by design. * Lead data center migration planning and execution, including workload discovery, dependency mapping, migration wave design, cutover sequencing, rollback planning, and post\-migration validation. * Define hybrid connectivity and network architecture patterns, including cloud on\-ramp, SD\-WAN integration, network segmentation, and connectivity resilience. * Own cloud security architecture design and implementation, including identity and access management, network security, encryption, and secure configuration baselines, in close collaboration with the Information Security department. * Define resilience and disaster recovery patterns for cloud and hybrid services, including RTO and RPO targets, multi\-zone approaches, and operationally proven DR testing. * Establish Infrastructure\-as\-Code practices ensuring all cloud environments are provisioned and managed through automated pipelines. * Implement FinOps practices covering budgets, alerting, tagging and chargeback standards, cost visibility reporting, and optimization. * Define cloud operational readiness standards including monitoring and observability, incident response integration, backup and restore patterns, and support models. * Progressively build a cloud engineering section of up to five engineers, defining team structure, hiring plan, and capability development roadmap. * Deliver training, enablement, and knowledge transfer across infrastructure, operations, security, and delivery teams to build cloud capability across EGA. **What You Will Bring** * 8 to 12 years in infrastructure and cloud engineering, with at least 5 years of hands\-on Azure experience in production environments. * Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ\-305\) is the minimum certification expectation; Azure DevOps Engineer Expert or Azure Security Engineer Associate are a strong advantage. * Demonstrated experience delivering cloud migration programs from on\-premise environments at enterprise scale. * Proven experience establishing cloud engineering practices, standards, and governance in an organization with limited prior cloud maturity. * Strong command of Infrastructure\-as\-Code tooling (Terraform, Bicep, or equivalent) and CI/CD pipeline integration for cloud provisioning. * Experience with hybrid connectivity patterns including VPN, ExpressRoute, and SD\-WAN integration. * Solid understanding of cloud security architecture including zero trust principles, network segmentation, identity governance, and encryption. * Experience working in a government, public sector, or regulated environment; UAE or GCC experience is a strong advantage. * Awareness of UAE data residency regulations and their architectural implications. * English fluency is essential.