Principal Azure Capacity & Resiliency Engineer

Principal Azure Capacity & Resiliency Engineer We are seeking a Principal Azure Capacity & Resiliency Engineer to lead capacity planning, financial stewardship, and resilience engineering for a high-visibility government cloud initiative operating under FedRAMP High regulatory requirements. This role is dedicated to a mission-critical Azure environment and reports directly to the Capacity Management Lead. Architecture standards are defined by a separate architecture team; this position owns the modeling, governance, demand management, and optimization of cloud capacity aligned to those standards. Role Overview This is a principal-level engineering role responsible for the end-to-end cloud capacity operating model across compute, storage, containers, networking, and platform services within Azure. The role is primarily focused on modeling, oversight, governance, and optimization. While capable of hands-on configuration when required, this is not a pure architecture or build position. You will partner closely with SRE, Security, Architecture, Governance, and Finance teams to ensure: • SLO alignment and performance integrity • Validated disaster recovery capacity • Engineered buffer standards • U.S. and U.S. Territories–only processing and storage compliance • Financial optimization aligned to demand forecasts What You’ll Own Cloud Capacity Strategy & Engineering • Lead the end-to-end capacity lifecycle: modeling, forecasting, monitoring, tuning, and governance • Build and maintain service-level capacity models across compute, AKS, databases, storage, networking, and cryptographic services • Establish and enforce engineered buffer standards (N+1/N+2, headroom %, runway weeks) aligned to service criticality • Design autoscaling guardrails aligned to SLI/SLO performance metrics • Translate telemetry and trend analysis into scaling, performance, and cost decisions • Partner with product and engineering teams to onboard and offboard workloads with clear demand modeling and cost accountability Resiliency & Disaster Recovery • Validate hot/warm/cold failover capacity without compromising steady-state performance • Conduct criticality analysis to prioritize high-impact services • Reserve quota and buffer for disaster and maintenance scenarios • Align resiliency strategy to FedRAMP High expectations and government regulatory standards Financial Stewardship & Demand Management • Own reservation strategy modeling and commitment planning across Azure services • Balance resilience, performance, and cost using Reservations, Savings Plans, and rightsizing strategies • Forecast demand based on product roadmaps and business growth • Drive financial stewardship through optimized commitment-based purchasing • Deliver executive-ready dashboards including utilization, saturation, headroom, scaling efficiency, DR readiness, and cost-to-performance metrics Compliance & Governance • Contribute to audit evidence and regulatory artifacts (SSP updates, control narratives, POA&M tracking, continuous monitoring artifacts) • Enforce U.S. and U.S. Territories–only processing, storage, backup, and disaster recovery requirements • Participate in Change Advisory Boards (CAB) as the capacity and resiliency representative • Maintain configuration governance discipline across Azure services Required Experience • 10–12+ years in infrastructure capacity planning and performance engineering • Expert-level Azure knowledge • Demonstrated capacity modeling and forecasting expertise • Strong experience with AKS scaling, throughput, and performance optimization • Deep understanding of Azure cost structures, reservations, and financial modeling • Hands-on experience operating in FedRAMP High or similarly regulated government environments (required) • Strong understanding of resiliency patterns and disaster recovery options • Familiarity with cloud security controls, firewalls, and compliance constraints • Experience working with Infrastructure as Code and CI/CD gated deployments • Strong problem-solving ability and executive communication skills Preferred Experience • Financial services background • Government program experience • Hands-on experience with Terraform or Bicep • Knowledge of Ansible • Working knowledge of Azure networking (VNets, routing, firewall flows, private endpoints) • Experience with cloud deployment methodologies Technical Environment • Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Metrics, Advisor, Cost Management • Reservations, Savings Plans, Quota Management • AKS, VMSS, App Service autoscaling (HPA/VPA) • Prometheus, Grafana • Azure SQL / Managed Instances • Azure Firewall, NSGs, Private Endpoints, Bastion • Azure Key Vault / Managed HSM • Terraform, Bicep, ARM • CI/CD gated deployments • Azure Policy and governance initiatives