Cloud Native OPS Engineer

Our client is seeking an experienced Senior Google Cloud Foundation Engineer to help establish and evolve an enterprise-grade Google Cloud Platform (GCP) foundation. The initial focus is the development of a cloud platform enabling AI services such as Google Gemini, while creating a scalable, secure, and governance-driven foundation for future cloud adoption across the organization. The ideal consultant combines strong cloud engineering expertise with hands-on platform implementation skills, cloud architecture knowledge, and a passion for automation and operational excellence.

The consultant will be responsible for: Cloud Engineering & Platform Automation: design, configure, and manage cloud services using GCP; automate infrastructure with Terraform; implement foundational cloud services and security controls; support migration of existing workloads; develop automation with Python; contribute to technology evolution and operational improvements.

Architecture & Platform Design: design and implement an enterprise-wide cloud foundation; translate requirements into scalable architectures; evaluate options; validate designs; provide guidance on governance and security.

Security & Governance: develop cloud security frameworks and threat models; define governance standards covering encryption, access management, compliance, and security policies; integrate security controls; ensure adoption of best practices.

Identity & Access Management: design IAM architectures; establish RBAC, federated identity, and least privilege. Operations, Monitoring & Reliability: implement logging, monitoring, observability, and alerting; integrate with SIEM; define incident management; perform incident resolution and root cause analysis; participate in on-call.

Cloud Governance & FinOps: define cloud operating models; establish cost management practices including cost tracking, showback, and budget optimization; advise on lifecycle management.

Networking: design secure and scalable networking architectures; configure gateways and security boundaries.

Innovation & Knowledge Management: identify improvements; maintain documentation; share knowledge.

Required experience and skills: Must-have: minimum 5 years in cloud engineering; proven GCP experience in enterprise environments; experience designing Cloud Foundations or Landing Zones; strong expertise in cloud security, IAM, networking, governance frameworks, and Infrastructure as Code; hands-on platform automation.

Technical skills: GCP, Terraform, Python, cloud monitoring and observability, IAM and security services, infrastructure automation.

Nice-to-have: experience with AI platforms such as Google Gemini, Microsoft Foundry, AWS Bedrock; experience in highly regulated environments; knowledge of FinOps.

Core competencies: adaptive, analytical thinking, collaboration, flexibility, IT infrastructure expertise, result-oriented mindset, software development knowledge, problem solving, continuous improvement, strong communication skills.

Expected deliverables: establishment of a functioning Google Cloud Foundation MVP supporting AI workloads; migration of existing use cases; delivery of enterprise-ready cloud foundation; implementation of governance, security, IAM, operational, and monitoring frameworks; creation of a secure, scalable, and future-proof cloud environment.

Job specifications: ID 14115, duration 19/10/2026 - 31/12/2027, location Mechelen, type Freelance.

Contact: [naam], IT Recruitment Consultant, [e-mailadres].