Grant Thornton International Ltd
Associate director, Technical Engineering (global role – in a virtual working environment)
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About Grant Thornton
Grant Thornton is one of the world’s leading professional services networks with member firms in over 150 countries, 80,000 people and global revenues of $8.5bn. Member firms offer audit, tax, and advisory services to privately owned companies, publicly listed companies, public sector and not for profit organisations, both domestically and internationally.
Grant Thornton International Ltd (GTIL) is the umbrella legal entity for the Grant Thornton global network of member firms. GTIL sets the strategic direction, convenes member firms, connects global communities, and protects the brand and reputation of the network. GTIL and the member firms will continually improve the sustainability of their operations and strive to make a positive impact on clients, people, markets, and the communities in which we operate, in line with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
At GTIL, we encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives. We believe talent is everywhere. We actively source and encourage applications from all around the globe to encourage new ways of working and tackling complex challenges together.
Role purpose
The Associate Director, Technical Engineering is the senior technical leader responsible for defining, maturing, and governing GTIL’s engineering capabilities across Azure Cloud, Identity & Access Management, and Azure Network Engineering.
This role sets the engineering direction, provides architectural oversight, leads the global engineering team, and engages directly in hands-on deep technical analysis and troubleshooting. The Associate Director ensures that GTIL’s cloud, identity, and network platforms are secure, scalable, resilient, and able to meet the evolving needs of GTIL and member firms.
The role requires a highly technical leader with the ability to balance strategic engineering direction with practical hands-on work during complex issues or major initiatives.
Main Responsibilities
Technical Leadership & Strategy
- Define and drive the global engineering roadmap for Azure cloud, identity, and network platforms.
- Lead architecture reviews and ensure solutions meet GTIL standards for security, scalability, and reliability.
- Align engineering standards with architecture, cyber security, and service delivery teams.
- Establish engineering best practices, automation frameworks, and reusable design patterns.
- Champion observability, resilience, AI, and “self-healing” engineering concepts across all platforms.
Hands-On Engineering & Troubleshooting
- Serve as the highest-level technical escalation point for complex Azure, identity, and network issues.
- Perform deep diagnostic analysis across cloud infrastructure, network connectivity, identity systems, automation, monitoring, and security.
- Lead root cause analysis and ensure engineering actions are implemented to prevent recurrence.
- Develop advanced automation, IAC pipelines, Azure network policies, and monitoring capabilities.
- Improve operational tooling, alerting, and engineering runbooks.
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Azure Network Engineering Responsibilities
- Provide architecture and oversight for Domain Services and Azure networking, including: Virtual networks (VNet), subnets, address space design; Network security groups (NSGS) and CheckPoint/Azure firewalls; VPN/express route, peering, hub-and-spoke architectures; Load balancers, application gateway, WAF; Private endpoints, private link, service endpoints
- Enhance cloud networking resilience, security, and global performance.
- Oversee network-related incident response, traffic analysis, and connectivity troubleshooting.
- Ensure proper role-based access, segmentation, and network governance.
Identity & Access Engineering Responsibilities
- Oversee engineering for Entra ID, MIM, Federation, PIM/PAM, App Registrations, and Identity Lifecycle.
- Provide expert support for identity synchronization, authentication protocols, and access control.
- Ensure alignment with identity security policies, industry best practices, least privilege, and regulatory requirements.
Azure Cloud Engineering Responsibilities
- Oversee compute, storage, backup/DR, monitoring, IAC, Azure policy/compliance, and cost governance.
- Guide cloud engineers in platform modernization, automation, and reliability engineering.
- Support resilient, scalable design and proactive cloud operations.
People Leadership & Team Development
- Lead a global engineering team across cloud, identity, and Azure network engineering.
- Develop deep technical capability and troubleshooting excellence across the team.
- Ensure clear work intake, prioritisation, capacity planning, and engineering documentation.
- Promote a culture of curiosity, automation-first mindset, and continuous improvement.
Service Provider & Stakeholder Management
- Oversee engineering-related managed service providers, ensuring adherence to SLAs and technical standards.
- Partner with MSPs on escalations, service improvements, and architectural alignment.
- Engage with global stakeholders to assess emerging needs and ensure engineering alignment.
Operational Excellence & Risk Management
- Own engineering KPIs, SLAs, monitoring dashboards, and operational metrics.
- Identify and mitigate technical risks across the environment.
- Lead post-incident reviews and ensure follow-up engineering actions are completed.
- Drive automation to reduce manual work and strengthen operational consistency.
- Share 24/7 on call responsibilities for Major Incidents
Experience Essential
- Extensive experience leading engineering teams in Microsoft-centric global environments.
- Advanced hands-on expertise in: Azure networking (VNets, routing, firewalls, WAF, peering, hybrid connectivity); Azure cloud platforms (monitoring, automation, storage, compute, DR, IaC); Identity technologies (Entra ID, conditional access, PIM/PAM, federation, MIM, OAuth/SAML)
- Deep troubleshooting capability across network, identity, and cloud layers.
- Experience governing engineering practices and enforcing technical standards.
- Strong record of working with MSPs to improve quality and performance.
- Excellent communication skills, capable of explaining complex technical issues to senior leaders.
- Quick learner and self-starter with the ability and confidence to execute their responsibilities with limited oversight
- A problem solver creative in finding solutions to issues or approaches to meet a need
- A team player willing to take on additional responsibilities as needed and able to adapt to changing priorities
- Experience of working within a global professional services environment and with international stakeholders
- Ability to work independently and in a team, with excellent problem-solving and analytical skills.
- Proactive engagement, stakeholder and internal advisement
- Triaging and collaborating on incoming work, routing to respective teams, act as intake / sizing POC
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Person specification
- Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or extensive professional experience.
- Highly analytical with exceptional problem-solving capabilities.
- Demonstrated curiosity about how systems work across all layers.
- Strong ownership mindset; comfortable diving into unfamiliar technologies.
- Passion for automation, AI, and eliminating repetitive tasks.
- Strong organisational and prioritisation skills.
- Excellent interpersonal and communication skills across global and cross-functional teams.
Benefits
At Grant Thornton International, you’ll join a global team working in a virtual‑first environment. What does this means for us? It means that work is no longer a place; it’s what we do. And it means you’ll have the flexibility to choose where you work within your country of employment, supported by the digital tools and equipment you need. The most important thing about the way we work though, is our CARE values – collaboration, agility, respect and excellence. As a result, our inclusive culture is one of our greatest strengths.
We provide learning and development opportunities aligned to your role and growth goals and you invest in yourself and career by making the most of them.
To support a good remote working environment, we provide a combination of one-off allowances and a monthly home office allowance. Alongside this, we offer a comprehensive range of core benefits including pension, health insurance, wellbeing programmes and more, although specific benefits may vary depending on the country of employment and local regulations.
By submitting your application, you consent to Grant Thornton International collecting and processing your personal data for recruitment purposes in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Your data will be used solely for evaluating your application and will not be shared with third parties without your consent. You can review our Data protection policy | Grant Thornton International for more details.
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