The On Premise & Azure Cloud Hosting Service Owner is accountable for the strategy, performance, and lifecycle management of the organisation’s hosting services across both traditional data centre environments and Microsoft Azure. This role ensures that compute, storage, virtualisation, backup, and cloud hosting platforms are secure, resilient, cost optimised, and aligned with business needs.
Acting as the authoritative owner of hosting services, the Service Owner defines the service roadmap, governs operational processes, and ensures that hosting platforms—whether on premise or cloud—deliver consistent, high quality outcomes. They work closely with infrastructure teams, cloud engineers, security, architecture, and external service providers to maintain service stability, manage capacity, and drive continuous improvement.
The successful candidate combines deep technical understanding of hosting technologies with strong service management discipline. They provide leadership during major incidents, oversee change governance, manage vendor performance, and ensure that hosting services evolve in line with modern cloud and hybrid cloud strategies.
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Own the full lifecycle of on-premise and Azure cloud hosting services, including compute, storage, virtualisation, backup, and platform services.
- Define and maintain the service strategy, roadmap, and service catalogue entries.
- Ensure hosting services meet performance, availability, security, and cost efficiency targets.
- Oversee datacentre hosting platforms (VMware/Hyper V, physical servers, SAN/NAS storage, backup infrastructure).
- Ensure capacity, performance, and resilience are proactively managed.
- Govern patching, firmware updates, hardware lifecycle, and platform upgrades.
- Govern Azure landing zones, resource groups, compute, storage, networking, and PaaS services.
- Ensure cloud environments follow best practices for cost optimisation, tagging, RBAC, and security baselines.
- Oversee Azure policy compliance, monitoring, and automation pipelines.
- Ensure patching, firmware, and hypervisor updates are consistently applied.
- Proactively identify capacity risks, ageing hardware, and end of support technologies.
- Enforce Azure governance (naming standards, tagging, RBAC, policy compliance).
- Monitor and remediate security recommendations (Defender for Cloud, identity hygiene).
- Ensure unused, misconfigured, or non compliant resources are removed or corrected.
- Maintain accurate CMDB and asset data for all hosting components.
- Ensure backup success rates, retention policies, and recovery tests meet standards.
- Drive automation to reduce manual effort and eliminate configuration drift.
- Act as the hosting service authority during major incidents affecting compute, storage, or cloud services.
- Ensure platform upgrades and migrations follow structured release processes.
- Track and report on hosting performance, capacity, cost, and incident trends.
- Use data to identify service gaps, risks, and opportunities for improvement.
- Provide regular service health updates to IT leadership and key stakeholders.
- Manage relationships with hosting vendors, cloud providers, MSPs, and hardware suppliers.
- Ensure vendors meet contractual obligations, SLAs, and performance targets.
- Lead service reviews and drive improvement actions across multi vendor environments.
- Ensure hosting services comply with security policies, regulatory requirements, and audit standards.
- Work with Security teams to manage vulnerabilities, patching, encryption, and identity controls.
- Maintain risk registers and ensure mitigation plans are in place for hosting related risks.
- Act as the primary point of contact for hosting service queries, escalations, and strategic discussions.
- Collaborate with architects, cloud engineers, application teams, and project managers.
- Support business change initiatives by ensuring hosting services are ready, scalable, and secure.
- Ensure all hosting documentation, runbooks, and operational guides are accurate and up to date.
- Maintain architectural diagrams, service models, and support processes.
- Provide training and guidance to operational teams on hosting standards and best practices.
Essential :
- Bachelor’s degree in:
- Information Technology
- Computer Science
- Cloud Computing
- Infrastructure Engineering
Desirable :
- Postgraduate qualification in Cloud Architecture, Cybersecurity, or IT Management
- Formal training in:
- Microsoft Azure administration or architecture
- Virtualisation platforms (VMware, Hyper V)
- Storage, backup, and datacentre technologies
- ITIL 4 Foundation (strongly preferred for service ownership roles)
Knowledge, Skill, ability
- 5–8+ years working in infrastructure, systems engineering, or hosting operations.
- Hands on experience with: VMware or Hyper V virtualisation, Physical server hardware, SAN/NAS storage platforms & Backup and recovery technologies
- Strong experience administering Azure services, including: Virtual Machines, Storage Accounts, Virtual Networks, Azure Backup & Site Recovery, Resource Groups, RBAC, and Azure Policy
- Experience with hybrid identity, landing zones, governance, and cost optimisation.
- Proven experience maintaining platform hygiene across on prem and cloud environments: Patching, firmware updates, and configuration baselines, Monitoring, alerting, and capacity forecasting
- Experience reducing technical debt and eliminating configuration drift.
- Experience owning or managing a technical service within an ITIL aligned environment.
- Strong understanding of Incident, Problem, Change, and Request processes, Risk and compliance management
- Experience leading post incident reviews and driving root cause remediation.
- Experience managing MSPs, cloud providers, hardware vendors, and datacentre partners.
- Ability to run service reviews, track SLAs, and drive performance improvements.
- Experience coordinating multi vendor environments during incidents and changes.
- Experience working with cloud engineers, architects, security teams, and application owners.
- Ability to translate hosting issues into clear business language.
- Experience supporting project delivery and ensuring hosting readiness for new services.
- Experience driving improvements in hosting performance, automation, and cost efficiency.
- Exposure to cloud migration, modernisation, or hybrid cloud transformation initiatives.
- Ability to shape and deliver a hosting service roadmap.
Essential requirement (non-negotiable) *
- Strong experience with VMware or Hyper V virtualisation
- Solid understanding of physical servers, SAN/NAS storage, and backup infrastructure
- Ability to manage patching, firmware updates, capacity, and lifecycle upgrades
- Hands on experience with Azure compute, storage, networking, RBAC, and governance
- Ability to manage Azure Policy, tagging standards, cost optimisation, and resource hygiene
- Experience with hybrid identity and Azure landing zone principles
- Proven track record of enforcing patching, configuration baselines, and security hardening
- Experience eliminating configuration drift and managing technical debt
- Ability to maintain accurate CMDB/asset data and ensure backup success rates
- Ability to lead hosting related major incidents with authority and clarity
- Strong understanding of Incident, Problem, Change, and Request processes
- Experience owning a technical service end to end
- Ability to define SLAs, KPIs, service models, and governance frameworks
- Experience managing MSPs, cloud providers, hardware vendors, and datacentre partners
- Ability to run service reviews, track SLAs, and drive performance improvements
- Understanding of vulnerability management, patching, encryption, and identity controls
- Ability to ensure compliance with audit, regulatory, and internal security standards
- Ability to translate hosting issues into clear business language
- Skilled at working with architects, cloud engineers, application teams, and leadership
- Clear documentation and communication during incidents and service reviews
Certification if any
- ITIL 4 Foundation
- Azure Administrator (AZ 104)
- Windows Server Hybrid Administrator (AZ 800/801)
- VMware VCP DCV
- Azure Solutions Architect Expert (AZ 305)
- Security+ or ISO 27001 Foundation
We are a specialist professional services and technology firm, working in partnership with leading insurance, highly regulated and global businesses.
We help our clients to manage risk, operate their core business processes, transform and grow. We deliver professional services and technology solutions across the risk and insurance value chain, including excellence in claims, underwriting, distribution, regulation & risk, customer experience, human capital, digital transformation & change management.
Our global team of more than 8,000 professionals operate across ten countries, including the UK & the U.S. Over the past ten years Davies has grown its annual revenues more than 20-fold, investing heavily in research & development, innovation & automation, colleague development, and client service. Today the group serves more than 1,500 insurance, financial services, public sector, and other highly regulated clients.
