Senior DevOps Engineer – Azure & Terraform (m/f/d) in Köln

• In Germany
• Berlin | Bonn | Cologne | Frankfurt/Main | Hamburg | Munich

Simon-Kucher is enabling its employees with generative AI based solutions to improve productivity.

To support this endeavor, a central Data & AI function is being established.

Together with our Data Analytics team Elevate and the Software Development team Engine, the demand for support of software development by IT is constantly increasing.

• What Makes Us Special
• Advance your career with exciting professional opportunities in our thriving company with a startup feel.
• Voice your unique ideas in a corporate culture defined by openness and integrity.
• Enjoy the opportunity to work from abroad (workation).
• Feel at home working with our helpful, enthusiastic colleagues who have great team spirit.
• Broaden your perspective with our extensive training curriculum and learning programs (e. g. Linked In Learning).
• Speak your mind in our holistic feedback and development processes (e. g. 360-degree feedback).
• Satisfy your need for adventure with our opportunities to live and work abroad in one of our many international offices
• Enjoy our benefits, such as hybrid working, daycare allowance, corporate discounts, and wellbeing support (e. g. Headspace).
• Unwind in our break areas where you can help yourself to the healthy snacks and beverages provided.
• See another side of your coworkers at our frequent employee events and highly anticipated World Meeting and Holiday Party.
• How You Will Create An Impact
• Design, build, and operate Azure infrastructure using Terraform as the primary Infrastructure as Code platform.
• Own Terraform architecture across multiple production environments, including modules, state, versioning, dependencies, and environment separation.
• Define reusable Ia C standards, patterns, and automation that can be adopted across engineering teams.
• Build and improve Azure Dev Ops CI/CD pipelines covering build, test, infrastructure deployment, application deployment, approvals, rollback, and release controls.
• Establish strong SDLC practices including code quality, security scanning, quality gates, and tools such as Sonar Qube.
• Design secure Azure environments using VNets, private endpoints, RBAC, Managed Identities, Key Vault, and least-privilege principles.
• Operate and improve AKS environments, including deployment, scaling, networking, observability, security, and troubleshooting.
• Lead production incident management, including investigation, prioritization, technical coordination, communication, resolution, and root‑cause follow‑up.
• Make and communicate architectural decisions, clearly explaining trade-offs, risks, operational impact, and maintainability.
• Take end-to-end ownership of platform initiatives while guiding engineers and communicating effectively with technical and non-technical stakeholders.

About You

• 5+ years of experience in Dev Ops, Cloud, or Platform Engineering with clear evidence of Senior-level ownership.

Ability to work independently, make technical decisions, guide other engineers, and communicate clearly in English (C1+).

• Deep hands‑on Terraform expertise is a core requirement, including personally designing, implementing, and operating production infrastructure at scale.

Nice to have: Hashi Corp Terraform Associate certification or another relevant Terraform certification.

• Proven experience managing Terraform across multiple complex production environments, with strong knowledge of modules, state, lifecycle, imports, dependencies, and deployment strategies.

A plus: Experience managing infrastructure across a large number of production environments.

Strong hands‑on Azure experience, including secure networking, identity, access management, secrets management, and production operations.

• Strong Azure Dev Ops experience, particularly designing and maintaining enterprise‑grade CI/CD pipelines. Nice to have: Experience with Git Hub Actions.
• Good understanding of the complete SDLC, including automated testing, code quality, security scanning, artifact management, approvals, and release governance.

Additional advantage: Experience with Azure Policy, Defender for Cloud, or container/image security tooling.

• Solid Kubernetes experience, preferably with AKS, plus strong Docker and containerization knowledge.
• Proven experience leading complex production incidents and driving root‑cause analysis and follow‑up improvements.
• Strong stakeholder‑management skills, including the ability to explain technical risks, trade‑offs, incidents, and delivery challenges clearly.
• Nice to have: Experience with Azure AI / Foundry, ML platforms, or data‑heavy workloads.

Additional asset: Experience with Lang Chain, Lang Graph, Lang Smith, or similar AI orchestration, evaluation, and observability platforms.

About Simon-Kucher

Simon-Kucher is a global consultancy with more than 2,200 employees in 30+ countries.

As a trusted commercial advisor focused on unlocking better growth, we combine deep consulting expertise, growth specialization, and technology to scale lasting impact.

We optimize every lever of commercial strategy – product, pricing, innovation, marketing, and sales – based on what customers want and value.

With over 40 years of monetization experience, we are recognized as the world’s leading commercial growth and pricing specialist. simon-kucher. com

We believe in building a culture that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion, creating an environment in which our people feel valued, are able to be themselves and feel their contribution matters.

If we get that right, remarkable things will happen; people will grow faster, innovate, feel valued, and create better outcomes for everyone – our people, our clients and, of course, our business.

Better growth starts here. With you.