Principal Digital Specialist (Cloud Architect)

About the Role

As Cloud Architect, you’ll lead the cloud hosting architecture for Scottish Water’s transition journey, from assessing application hosting needs, to defining landing zone patterns, to specifying Azure services for networking, identity, security, monitoring, backup, disaster recovery and platform services. You’ll help teams choose the right approach: rehost, replatform, refactor or rebuild, balancing delivery pace with long-term sustainability and operational excellence. This role is ideal for an experienced infrastructure or cloud architect who can translate hosting requirements into clear, deployable Azure architectures, standards and implementation guidance.

What You’ll Be Doing

You will define Azure hosting architectures for core systems by producing reference architectures for IaaS hosting, including virtual machines, storage, connectivity, backup, disaster recovery, patching and monitoring. You will define when IaaS is the right fit versus PaaS, ensuring hosting decisions are secure, resilient, supportable and cost‑effective. You will design cloud networking and connectivity patterns by specifying designs for hub‑and‑spoke networking, routing, firewalling, private endpoints, DNS and hybrid connectivity. Working with Networks, Platforms and Cyber Security teams, you will ensure Azure connectivity patterns are practical, secure and maintainable. A key part of the role will be enabling cloud‑native delivery through PaaS patterns. You will define standard patterns using services such as App Service, Functions, API Management, Service Bus, Event Grid, Key Vault, managed databases and secure integration services.

You will also create golden paths, reusable templates and platform standards so delivery teams can build consistent cloud solutions faster. You will govern and assure cloud designs across programmes by providing architectural assurance for project designs and ensuring alignment with Scottish Water standards for security, resilience, supportability and cost management. Working closely with Cyber Security, you will help embed controls for identity, logging, threat detection, encryption, secrets management and vulnerability management.

You will turn requirements into clear architecture outputs, including standards, patterns, high‑level designs and implementation guidance. Collaboration and influencing will be central to the role. You will document as‑is and to‑be architectures for change programmes to support delivery alignment, partner engagement and governance. Partnering with Platforms, Enterprise Architecture, Networks, Cyber Security and delivery teams, you will help remove blockers and get designs implemented pragmatically. You will also engage vendors and partners where needed, ensuring designs are achievable, maintainable and aligned to Scottish Water’s long‑term platform direction.

What You’ll Bring

We're looking for someone with strong experience designing Azure infrastructure for business‑critical workloads and a solid grounding in IaaS architecture, including compute, storage, networking, identity, backup and disaster recovery. You will have a good understanding of cloud security fundamentals, including identity and access, network segmentation, encryption, logging, monitoring and vulnerability management. You'll be able to translate business and technical requirements into clear architecture outputs, standards, patterns and implementation guidance. You will be confident influencing both technical and non‑technical stakeholders, with the judgement to balance delivery pace, operational risk and long‑term platform sustainability. Above all, you'll bring a pragmatic, collaborative mindset and the ability to work effectively with internal teams, delivery partners and vendors. Experience modernising legacy estates, guiding migration choices, working with CI/CD and infrastructure‑as‑code tools such as Bicep or Terraform, applying policy guardrails, standardising environments, or operating in regulated or critical national infrastructure environments would all be advantageous.

What We Offer

You’ll join a collaborative and future‑focused digital organisation with the chance to make a tangible impact on how Scottish Water hosts, secures and operates the platforms that support essential services. You’ll help shape our Azure cloud architecture, modernise our hosting estate, and enable secure, resilient digital services for communities across Scotland.

Looking Out for You

This is a full‑time role (35 hours per week) and you’ll get plenty of time to recharge with 38 days of holiday every year (including public holidays). And you can even buy five more if you need a little extra time. You can also take time off to volunteer in your community. When it comes to major life events we have family‑friendly policies around adoption, maternity, and parental leave. And for the everyday? We embrace flexible working. For your future, there’s our pension (the "know-what-you’ll-get-when-you-retire" kind), and life assurance. As for some nice extras? You will participate in a company bonus scheme. Not to mention access to SW Splash – handy rewards that can save you money on holidays, bills, and shopping.

• This role will be a Grade8.
• If you’re new to Scottish Water, you’ll join us on a starting salary of £54,776. Performance‑driven pay progression would then allow you to move through the range to a maximum of £74,386.
• Job offers at Scottish Water are conditional, and will be confirmed on completion of our pre‑employment screening, e.g. referencing, criminal record checks, licence checks, etc. Screening is conducted on our behalf by a third party, and must be completed before your start date. Don’t worry – we’ll only start these checks once you’ve accepted an offer.
• We operate Balanced Hybrid working at Scottish Water and we encourage people to work half their time in a Scottish Water location.
• Research shows that some people avoid applying for jobs unless they can meet every single criteria.
• We hardly ever hire people who can do every part of a job from Day One.
• Everyone has a learning curve.
• Let us know if there are any changes we can make to our recruitment process to help you perform at your best.
• Lots of our people have disabilities or neurodiverse conditions (including some of our recruiters!). We’re also aware that some people might be experiencing temporary challenges because of life events, like menopause. We’re very used to making adjustments, so please don’t be afraid to ask.
• As part of our commitment to developing a flourishing Scotland, it’s important that all our employees are Scottish taxpayers. If you join us, your home address will need to be in Scotland. If you don’t already live here, you'll need to commit to moving here within your first three months.
• Candidates should be aware that a valid UK driving licence is required for driving on Scottish Water business and claiming business mileage expenses.
• Please note, Scottish Water takes the safety, health and wellbeing of our employees, colleagues and customers very seriously and as such you may be subject to Drug & Alcohol testing in line with our policy.
• Lastly (finally!), candidates who haven’t submitted an application in the last 12 months will have their records removed from our recruitment database. You won’t need to do anything. Your data will be automatically deleted.

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Together we are Trusted to Serve Scotland.

Working at Scottish Water you'll be making a real difference to the lives of the people and communities in Scotland who rely on the vital water and waste water services we provide. We offer a broad range of career opportunities and our approach to inclusion and diversity means we can make a real difference together. Our people are essential to providing our customers with the very best service in communities around Scotland. We're passionate about attracting, developing and retaining the best people who can make a positive difference to our business. If you are passionate about delivering a great customer service and can inspire trust and demonstrate pride in your work, we are confident that you will find Scottish Water a place where you can build on your talents and one where you can thrive.

If you would like to join our team at Scottish Water you can find out more about our latest vacancies here. Please note that candidates who have not submitted an application in the last 12 months will be automatically removed from our system records. For further information on how Scottish Water manages your data, please see the Privacy Notice here: Data Protection – Recruitment Privacy Notice.

Together we are Trusted to Serve Scotland.