Remote - Azure Platform Engineer

About World Business Lenders (www.wbl.com)

World Business Lenders (WBL) provides short-term, real estate–collateralized commercial loans to small and medium-sized businesses across the United States that do not have access to traditional financing. The company also services its own loan portfolio and those of third parties, with a focus on managing non-performing loan pools and REO.

• WBL is a U.S.-based company with a fully remote workforce.
• Working hours are 9:00am–6:00pm Eastern Time, Monday through Friday.
• The role requires strong spoken and written English.
• All resumes must be submitted in English.

Overview

• In this role, you'll help create a reliable Azure platform that supports quick, secure, and consistent deployment of containerized applications.
• As an Azure Platform Engineer, you'll turn application and business needs into scalable cloud solutions, automate processes, enhance monitoring, and ensure security and governance are upheld throughout the Azure environment.

Job Duties and Responsibilities

• Join us in designing, implementing, and maintaining Azure resource architectures that run containerized applications. You'll primarily focus on Azure Container Apps environments, container apps, and their related resources.
• Enjoy configuring and managing essential Azure services such as Azure Container Registry, Azure Key Vault, Azure Monitor, Log Analytics, Application Insights, virtual networks, load balancers, and private endpoints to support our application workloads.
• Use Infrastructure as Code tools like Bicep, ARM templates, or Terraform to provision Azure environments consistently, reliably, and with full auditing.
• Build, maintain, and optimize Dockerfiles and container images for Linux-based applications, ensuring they are lean, secure, and perform smoothly at runtime.
• Implement secure secrets management for containers by leveraging Azure Key Vault and native Azure integrations for handling connection strings, API keys, certificates, and passwords.
• Integrate vulnerability scanning into the image build and deployment workflows, collaborating with development and security teams to promptly address any issues.
• Help keep our applications and platforms observable, reliable, and cost-effective by configuring and maintaining monitoring setups using Azure Monitor, Application Insights, Log Analytics, and setting up alerts for key health and performance metrics.
• Take the lead in diagnosing and resolving any incidents affecting our containerized workloads, whether they involve networking, identity, configurations, or performance across the Azure platform.
• Analyze resource usage and Azure cost data to spot optimization opportunities, such as right-sizing resources, adjusting scaling policies, optimizing images, or selecting the best services for the job.
• Collaborate closely with application development, data, and security teams to define platform requirements and establish best practices for deploying and managing services on Azure.

Requirements

Main Requirements:

• Education:
• A Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Information Systems, or an equivalent blend of practical experience is required.
• Experience:
• Bring 3 to 5+ years of hands-on expertise with cloud platforms, including at least 2+ years honing your skills specifically with Microsoft Azure.

Preferred Background / Industry Experience

• Demonstrated expertise in Microsoft Azure, confidently navigating core services such as compute, networking, storage, identity, and monitoring to deliver robust solutions.
• Hands-on experience deploying and managing containerized applications using Azure Container Apps, Azure Kubernetes Service, or other leading container platforms, ensuring smooth and scalable operations.
• Skilled in Docker, adept at crafting and maintaining Dockerfiles, managing container images, and troubleshooting runtime issues on Linux environments.
• Strong Linux systems administration capabilities, including process and package management, filesystem permissions, basic networking, systemd, and comprehensive logging.
• Proven experience with Azure Container Registry, efficiently handling image lifecycle management tasks such as versioning, promotion across environments, and retention policies.
• Practical knowledge of Azure Key Vault and implementing secrets management best practices for secure application workloads.
• Familiar with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools and methodologies, including Bicep, ARM, Terraform, or their equivalents, complemented by Git-based workflows.
• Experienced with CI/CD pipelines using tools like GitHub Actions and Azure DevOps Pipelines to automate building, testing, and deploying containerized applications seamlessly.
• Solid understanding of Azure networking fundamentals, covering VNets, subnets, NSGs, private endpoints, DNS, and hybrid connectivity, alongside core cloud security principles such as IAM/RBAC, managed identities, network security, encryption, and logging.

Specific Technical Skills Needed

• Docker
• Docker Compose
• git
• Azure Cloud
• Linux

Specific Soft Skills Needed

• Strong analytical and problem-solving abilities, with hands-on experience in troubleshooting complex issues across cloud, network, and application layers.
• Excellent communication skills that allow you to clearly and simply explain platform concepts and trade-offs to both technical and non-technical team members.
• A team player who enjoys collaborating with colleagues from different areas like development, security, infrastructure, and operations.
• A sense of ownership and responsibility for production systems, including willingness to take part in on-call rotations as needed.

Benefits

• Enjoy Paid Time Off (PTO) to recharge
• Salary paid in USD
• Work comfortably 100% from home