Infrastructure & Microsoft Cloud Platform Lead

Circet USA Overview

Circet USA is a leading provider of telecommunications and data center infrastructure services in North America. We deliver comprehensive engineering, construction, and network solutions that support the evolving connectivity and infrastructure needs of our customers. With nearly 50 years of industry experience, we partner with major telecom providers, cloud service providers, general contractors, data center operators, and utilities to design and deliver customized solutions that solve complex challenges. At Circet USA, you'll have the opportunity to make an impact, contribute to critical infrastructure projects, and help shape the future of connectivity.

Job Summary and Responsibilities

The Infrastructure Lead at Circet USA is responsible for designing the Microsoft-based target architecture for the new IT environment, developing a project plan to move away from the legacy environment, and implementing and operating this new core IT infrastructure. This role involves significant hands-on engineering work across network, servers, cloud, and end-user platforms, establishing Microsoft Azure and Microsoft 365 as the core enterprise platforms for infrastructure, identity, collaboration, security, and endpoint management. The ideal candidate is comfortable defining strategy, standards, and governance while also rolling up their sleeves to build, configure, and support systems directly.

ESSENTIAL DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES

• Own the overall infrastructure strategy and roadmap (on-prem, cloud, network, storage, backup, endpoints) in alignment with business and security priorities.
• Define infrastructure standards, patterns, and best practices for availability, performance, security, and scalability.
• Own the Microsoft Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) for Circet USA, including identity, networking, security, governance, landing zone design, and platform automation aligned with Microsoft best practices.
• Apply the Microsoft Well-Architected Framework to platform and workload designs across security, reliability, cost optimization, performance, and operational excellence.
• Define and maintain Azure and Microsoft 365 architectural standards for all new workloads and acquisitions.
• Act as the primary infrastructure point of contact for IT leadership, security, applications, and business stakeholders.
• Provide technical leadership to a small team of engineers/administrators and any external partners, including informal mentoring and code/review of configurations.
• Design and implement network, system, and cloud solutions, focusing on Azure landing zones, virtual networks, subnets, firewalls, and hybrid connectivity.
• Build and manage Microsoft Azure IaaS and PaaS environments, including compute, storage, networking, and platform services.
• Define and implement Azure subscription and management group hierarchy, resource group standards, naming/tagging conventions, and Azure Policy baselines.
• Lead infrastructure components of key projects (e.g., new site deployment, application rollouts, migrations, security initiatives).
• Perform advanced troubleshooting of infrastructure issues (network, servers, cloud resources, storage, backups) and drive problem resolution.
• Configure, monitor, and maintain systems, including patching, updates, capacity management, and performance tuning.
• Implement and operate monitoring, alerting, and logging tools; proactively address issues before they impact the business.
• Participate in and help define on-call rotations and incident response for critical infrastructure events.
• Work closely with security teams to implement and maintain security controls (hardening, firewalls, VPN, endpoint tools, identity & access).
• Design and operate backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity capabilities appropriate to the organization's risk profile.
• Implement and operate Microsoft security platforms, including Defender for Cloud, Defender for Endpoint, Conditional Access, and Privileged Identity Management (PIM), in alignment with Zero Trust principles.
• Ensure infrastructure changes follow change management processes and are documented clearly and consistently.
• Contribute to and enforce infrastructure-related policies, standards, and procedures.
• Collaborate with application, data, and service desk teams to ensure infrastructure appropriately supports their needs and SLAs.
• Document architectures, runbooks, and troubleshooting guides; help build a knowledge base for the broader IT team.
• Identify opportunities for automation and process improvement (e.g., infrastructure-as-code, scripted deployments, standardized images).

Qualifications

• 7+ years of experience in infrastructure engineering/administration roles, with increasing responsibility.
• Strong hands-on experience with: Networking and Azure networking (routing/switching, VLANs, VPN, firewalls, wireless).
• Hands-on experience designing and deploying Azure Landing Zones, including network architecture, security, and governance.
• Deep hands-on experience designing and operating Microsoft Azure environments; exposure to other cloud platforms is a plus but not required.
• Core services such as Active Directory/Microsoft Entra ID, DNS, DHCP, certificates, file services.
• Experience designing and supporting highly available, secure, and scalable infrastructure environments.
• Demonstrated ability to own complex incidents end-to-end, from diagnosis through root cause analysis and remediation.
• Prior experience providing technical guidance or leading small teams (formal or informal).

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience in a greenfield, merger/separation, or rapidly changing IT environment where processes and standards had to be built from scratch.
• Familiarity with infrastructure-as-code and automation tools (e.g., PowerShell, Terraform, …).
• Exposure to security frameworks and practices (e.g., least privilege, zero trust, hardening guidelines).
• Experience working with ITIL-based processes (incident, problem, change) and ITSM tools.

Key Competencies

• Hands-on builder mindset: willing and able to configure, troubleshoot, and support systems personally.
• Strong problem-solving and analytical skills; calm under pressure during incidents and outages.
• Clear communication with both technical and non-technical stakeholders.
• Ownership and accountability; comfortable operating with limited legacy structure in a new IT organization.

Safety Duties & Responsibilities

• Adhere to, promote, and accept personal responsibility for compliance to: Federal and Local Occupational Safety and Health Regulations, Industry Consensus Standards, Circet USA Injury and Illness Prevention Program Manual.
• Participate in job site safety/hazard analysis.

Equal Opportunity Employer

Circet USA is an Equal Opportunity Employer - Veteran/Disabled. Qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, protected veteran status or other characteristics protected by law.