Lead Consultant

About the Company

Umbrellar Technology Group is a New Zealand-owned technology business with more than two decades of experience delivering infrastructure that supports essential services across the country. The company works with organisations ranging from smaller businesses to large enterprises, creating and operating public, private, and hybrid cloud environments, data platforms, and secure AI solutions. Built on a strong background in data centre services and extensive Microsoft capability, the business now focuses on cloud infrastructure, managed services, and an expanding Data and AI practice.

The organisation describes itself as a close, collaborative team that values empowerment, ongoing learning, inclusion, and doing the right thing. It places importance on diversity and on creating a workplace where people are supported to succeed.

Role Purpose

The Lead Consultant is a senior, highly practical role within the Cloud Engineering team at Umbrellar Technology Group. The position exists to help the company be recognised as a leader in cloud professional and managed services by serving as the technical authority and customer-facing technical lead on cloud engagements.

Key Focus Areas

• Leading project delivery technically and representing the company on major cloud assignments from initial kickoff through delivery and transition to steady state, while managing technical conversations with customer stakeholders alongside the project managers.
• Providing hands-on delivery work as a billable Azure specialist, contributing directly to the design, build, and configuration of customer solutions with the cloud engineering team.
• Owning technical standards jointly with the pre-sales cloud architect, including delivery standards, reference architectures, and engineering patterns, while also acting as an escalation point and mentor for the engineering team.
• Advising customers technically, building trusted relationships with their technical leaders, and identifying future opportunities and architectural improvements for sales and account teams.
• Providing technical leadership across the business by tracking industry and technology trends and helping raise the capability of the wider team.

Responsibilities

• Take ownership of the technical relationship on assigned cloud projects from contract handover through delivery and operational transition.
• Lead technical discussions with customer stakeholders, from senior IT leadership and CIO-level contacts through to engineering teams.
• Convert the pre-sales solution into a working delivery outcome and make architectural decisions as delivery conditions evolve.
• Work closely with the project manager, who handles delivery management, while the cloud architect for delivery remains accountable for the technical outcome.
• Review engineering work to ensure it aligns with the agreed solution design and statement of work.
• Act as a billable consulting resource on cloud projects.
• Design, build, and configure Azure solutions involving infrastructure as code, networking, identity, security, data platforms, and PaaS/IaaS services.
• Collaborate closely with cloud engineers on complex implementation work.
• Stay deeply current with Azure as an active practitioner rather than a purely theoretical architect.
• Work with the pre-sales cloud architect to define and maintain delivery standards, reference architectures, and engineering patterns.
• Ensure pre-sales designs can be delivered successfully and that lessons from delivery improve pre-sales patterns and pricing.
• Coach engineers through technical mentoring, design reviews, and infrastructure-as-code or code reviews.
• Serve as the technical escalation contact for the cloud engineering team during delivery.
• Support customer technical leadership during delivery and after go-live by building strong, long-term trust.
• Identify follow-on opportunities, MACDs, and architectural improvements, then pass them to sales and account management teams.
• Represent the company in customer steering committees and governance forums for active projects.
• Contribute technical leadership on Azure and related cloud technologies across the business.
• Participate in internal technical forums and idea-sharing activities to encourage open discussion and problem-solving.
• Help improve delivery tooling, intellectual property, patterns, and accelerators.
• Advise on the administration and management of customer environments, platforms, and servers across Azure and other cloud platforms.
• Act as a knowledge hub and help create knowledge articles for the wider team.
• Make sure all customer interactions are logged in the relevant internal tools.
• Stay informed about vendor product announcements relevant to the company’s services.

Experience and Capabilities

• More than 10 years of hands-on experience designing, delivering, and administering Azure environments at enterprise scale.
• Proven background as technical lead on complex, high-visibility cloud projects from kickoff through transition.
• More than 10 years of experience working with senior customer executives and technical leaders in both business and technical discussions.
• Ability to coach and elevate technical teams without having formal people-management authority.
• Strong self-drive, initiative, and motivation.
• Demonstrated commitment to excellent customer service.
• Senior Azure certifications, such as Azure Solutions Architect Expert, are strongly preferred.
• Experience with Microsoft Fabric and Azure AI Foundry.

Personal Attributes

• Commitment to personal growth and helping others develop.
• Willingness to share knowledge and support a continuous learning culture.
• Strong work ethic and high professional integrity.
• Positive attitude, sound judgement, practical common sense, energy, and a good sense of humour.

Why Join Umbrellar

The company offers a people-first environment with a strong focus on personal and professional development. Benefits include 10 bonus leave days on top of 20 annual leave days, medical and life insurance, a modern and enjoyable office in Takapuna, and a supportive, flexible culture that aims to promote real work-life balance.

Additional Information

This is a senior technical authority role rather than a people-management position. Team management for the cloud engineering function remains with the CTO.