Cloud Engineer (Azure, Terraform, Security)

📋 Job Overview

At Blackbirds, we build AI-, data-, and cloud solutions for organizations in healthcare, facility services, and government. Most of our solutions run on our own Azure platform. With ISO 27001 certification as a foundation, we continue to professionalize, standardize, and develop further. We are looking for someone who takes responsibility for our platform, contributes, builds, and monitors it together with the lead engineer.

🏢 About Blackbirds

Blackbirds is a boutique AI- and data consultancy based in Rotterdam. We deliver high-end solutions, managed services, and SaaS solutions for organizations that want to go beyond experimentation. No buzzwords, no PowerPoint consultancy: solutions that work and deliver results. We are a small team with short lines, growing rapidly, and more vacancies are open.

🎯 The Role

You will work together with the lead engineer, who set up the platform, to be responsible for our Azure platform. There is no hierarchy between you: you work together based on expertise. The management will fall to you, along with the responsibility for the infrastructure. This is a production environment where customers operate, not a sandbox.

✅ Key Responsibilities

• Develop our hub-spoke infrastructure further with Terraform: modules, networking, and security.
• Perform operational management: monitoring, incidents, updates, and costs.
• Secure the platform with NSG’s, Azure Policy, Defender for Cloud, private endpoints, and identity & access.
• Automate with CI/CD (GitHub Actions), Infrastructure-as-Code, and GitOps.
• Manage the GitHub organization, repository structure, and OIDC configuration.
• Document architecture decisions, compliance evidence, and runbooks.

📌 Required Qualifications

• Hands-on experience with Azure: networking (VNets, subnets, private endpoints), identity (Entra ID, RBAC, managed identities), and security.
• Terraform: writing modules, understanding state, and reviewing plans.
• Git and GitHub: branches, PR’s, Actions workflows, and organization management.
• A security mindset: thinking from least-privilege, default-deny, and compliance.
• Self-sufficiency: taking initiative without someone outlining tasks.

⭐ Desirable Experience

• Experience with container platforms (Container Apps, AKS, Docker).
• ISO 27001 or similar frameworks.
• Azure Policy or Defender for Cloud.
• Observability tooling (Log Analytics, KQL, Grafana).
• Multi-tenant and managed service architectures.

🎁 Benefits

Responsibility: you not only execute but also determine how the platform looks. You have direct influence on security, reliability, and scalability on an ISO 27001-certified platform that takes compliance seriously. You receive complete architecture documentation and intensive onboarding. You can grow towards cloud security, platform architecture, or DevOps leadership. Additionally, we offer a market-conform salary, free lunch, and an office in Little C, Rotterdam.

🛂 Visa & Eligibility

Netherlands speak and write is a requirement, given your central role and contact with stakeholders. You work on and from our office in Rotterdam as a starting point.