Available for contracts

Alex Lyon Cloud Platform Engineer

I help organisations design and deliver secure, scalable cloud platforms - from Azure Landing Zone foundations to production-grade IaC pipelines and governance frameworks.

Lyon IT Consulting Ltd  ·  UK Public Sector  ·  Outside IR35  ·  Azure & GCP

Organisations I've worked with

Cabinet Office

UK Government

Bain & Company

Global Consulting

BP

Energy

ASOS

Retail & Technology

PwC

Professional Services

What I deliver

Services

Engagements are outcome-focused — I deliver working infrastructure and documented, maintainable platforms, not just recommendations.

Azure Landing Zone Implementation

End-to-end design and delivery of enterprise Azure Landing Zones — management group hierarchies, policy assignments, RBAC, networking topology (hub-and-spoke or Virtual WAN), and governance guardrails.

Azure CAF ALZ Policy RBAC

IaC & Pipeline Delivery

Production-grade Terraform modules, state management, and CI/CD pipelines via GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps. Includes PR-based workflows, policy-as-code gates, and drift detection.

Terraform GitHub Actions Azure DevOps OpenTofu

Cloud Governance & Policy

Azure Policy and Defender for Cloud configuration, compliance reporting, cost management frameworks, and tagging strategies. Building guardrails that enable teams rather than block them.

Azure Policy Defender for Cloud Compliance FinOps

Platform Engineering

Internal developer platforms, self-service infrastructure APIs, and platform abstractions that reduce cognitive load on product teams. Kubernetes (AKS/GKE), container strategy, and service mesh.

AKS GKE Kubernetes Helm ArgoCD

Cloud Migration & Modernisation

Structured lift-and-shift, re-platform, and re-architect programmes. Technical discovery, workload assessment, landing zone readiness, and hands-on migration execution across Azure and GCP.

Azure Migrate GCP Migrate WAF Architecture Review

Technical Advisory & Review

Architecture reviews, cloud strategy advisory, and team enablement. Embedded or fractional engagements to upskill platform teams, review existing estate, and set technical direction.

Architecture Advisory Enablement Strategy

Background

About

I'm a senior cloud platform engineer with over 10 years' experience designing and delivering enterprise infrastructure across financial services, global consulting, and the public sector.

My background spans financial services at Lloyd's and Lloyds Banking Group, global consulting firms including Bain & Company and PwC, and UK government through the Cabinet Office. I'm experienced working within UK government and public sector environments, including regulated and sensitive programmes.

My focus is the foundation layer - landing zones, IaC pipelines, governance frameworks, and platform tooling that enables product teams rather than blocking them. I work closely with architecture, security, and delivery teams throughout.

Outside of cloud infrastructure I'm interested in platform engineering as a discipline, internal developer experience, and the practical side of cloud-native security.

BEng Engineering graduate.

Connect on LinkedIn

Technical stack

Cloud Platforms

Microsoft Azure Google Cloud Platform

IaC & Automation

Terraform OpenTofu Bicep Ansible

CI/CD

GitHub Actions Azure DevOps ArgoCD

Containers & Orchestration

Kubernetes AKS GKE Helm Docker

Governance & Security

Azure Policy Defender for Cloud Entra ID IAM

Observability

Azure Monitor Log Analytics Prometheus Grafana

Certifications

Microsoft Certified

Azure Administrator Associate

AZ-104

Microsoft Certified

DevOps Engineer Expert

AZ-400

Google Certified

Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer

GCP

Engagement structure

Working with Lyon IT Consulting Ltd

All work is delivered through Lyon IT Consulting Ltd, a UK limited company. Engagements are structured as genuine business-to-business service contracts.

Service-based engagement

Lyon IT Consulting Ltd is engaged to deliver defined outcomes and deliverables — a working platform, a deployed landing zone, a CI/CD pipeline. The contract is for a service, not for the provision of labour.

Right of substitution

As a limited company, Lyon IT Consulting Ltd retains the right to provide a suitably qualified substitute to fulfil the engagement where appropriate — a fundamental indicator of a genuine business relationship.

Own equipment & tooling

Work is performed using equipment, software licences, and tooling owned by Lyon IT Consulting Ltd. The business bears its own costs and operates independently of client IT estates where possible.

Business-to-business contracts

Engagements are structured as commercial contracts between Lyon IT Consulting Ltd and the client entity. Standard T&Cs, professional indemnity insurance, and business insurance are maintained.

No mutuality of obligation

Lyon IT Consulting Ltd is not obliged to accept work offered, nor is the client obliged to offer further work beyond the agreed statement of work. Each engagement is discrete and commercially negotiated.

Professional indemnity & insurance

The company carries professional indemnity insurance, public liability insurance, and operates with all standard obligations of a UK limited company registered at Companies House.

IR35 status: Engagements are structured to reflect a genuine outside IR35 position. Clients requiring a Status Determination Statement (SDS) are welcomed to request one. Lyon IT Consulting Ltd can provide relevant contractual and working practice documentation to support the determination process.

Get in touch

Start a conversation

If you have an upcoming engagement, want to discuss requirements, or simply want to explore whether there's a fit — get in touch. I aim to respond to all enquiries within one business day.

All enquiries are treated as confidential. I'm typically available for contract start dates with 2–4 weeks notice.