Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) SME 12-Month Fixed-Term Contract £60,000–£70,000 Remote - Must be UK based  SC Clearance Active Required The Opportunity We're looking for an experienced Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) Subject Matter Expert to join a specialist infrastructure team supporting a large-scale enterprise Azure Virtual Desktop environment. This is a fantastic opportunity for someone who enjoys working in a remote-first environment, taking ownership of a business-critical AVD platform, and delivering a secure, resilient, and high-performing end-user experience. You'll play a key role in the support, administration and continuous improvement of a mature Azure Virtual Desktop estate while working alongside experienced infrastructure and cloud professionals. Key Responsibilities<ul><li>Support and administer a large-scale Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) environment</li><li>Manage host pools, session hosts, application groups and user access</li><li>Build, maintain and optimise AVD images and golden images</li><li>Administer FSLogix profiles and associated storage solutions such as Azure NetApp Files or equivalent</li><li>Ensure platform availability, resilience and disaster recovery readiness</li><li>Troubleshoot complex AVD performance, connectivity and user experience issues</li><li>Monitor platform health and implement service improvements</li><li>Work closely with infrastructure, cloud and security teams to maintain best practice</li><li>Participate in a shared 1-in-3 on-call support rota</li></ul>Essential Skills & Experience<ul><li>4+ years' experience supporting Microsoft Azure infrastructure</li><li>Strong hands-on experience with Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD)</li><li>Experience administering:<ul><li>Host Pools</li><li>Session Hosts</li><li>Application Groups</li><li>User Profiles</li><li>Image Management</li></ul></li><li>Strong understanding of FSLogix profile containers</li><li>Experience with Azure networking and core Azure services</li><li>Excellent troubleshooting skills across Windows and Azure environments</li><li>Experience working in enterprise production environments</li><li>Active UK Security Clearance (SC), or the ability to obtain it</li></ul>Desirable Skills<ul><li>Azure NetApp Files (or similar enterprise storage solutions)</li><li>Terraform and Infrastructure as Code (IaC)</li><li>Azure Automation</li><li>Azure Monitor / Log Analytics</li><li>PowerShell scripting</li><li>Microsoft Intune</li><li>Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD)</li></ul>Certifications <ul><li>AZ-140 – Microsoft Certified: Azure Virtual Desktop Specialty</li><li>AZ-900 – Microsoft Certified: Azure Fundamentals</li><li>Additional Azure certifications are advantageous</li></ul>

Azure Virtual Desktop SME

Senior Network Automation Engineer 6-month contract Outside IR35  Hybrid - 2 days a week in Manchester Active SC Clearance Required We're looking for a Senior Network Automation Engineer to join a consultancy delivering large-scale transformation across cloud and network infrastructure. This is a hands-on engineering role for someone passionate about Infrastructure as Code, automation and modern NetDevOps practices. You'll work within a highly skilled engineering team delivering automation-first solutions across hybrid cloud environments while improving reliability, reducing operational overhead and modernising network services. Key Responsibilites <ul><li>Designing and automating cloud-based network infrastructure</li><li>Building Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and Ansible</li><li>Developing automation for network provisioning and operational tasks</li><li>Building and maintaining CI/CD pipelines</li><li>Supporting AWS, Azure and hybrid cloud networking</li><li>Improving platform reliability and observability</li><li>Working within Agile engineering teams</li><li>Collaborating with Architects, Platform Engineers and Security teams</li><li>Driving continuous improvement and automation across network services</li></ul>Essential Skills<ul><li>Strong Infrastructure as Code experience (Terraform)</li><li>Configuration Management (Ansible preferred)</li><li>CI/CD (GitLab, Jenkins, Azure DevOps or GitHub Actions)</li><li>Linux administration and Bash/Python scripting</li><li>AWS and/or Azure networking</li><li>Kubernetes or container platform experience</li><li>Git and version control</li><li>Monitoring using Prometheus, Grafana or similar</li><li>Strong understanding of NetDevOps principles</li><li>Agile/Scrum delivery experience</li></ul>Desirable<ul><li>Cisco networking</li><li>Palo Alto or Fortinet</li><li>OCI</li><li>Helm</li><li>GitOps</li><li>ArgoCD</li><li>ServiceNow</li></ul> Tech Stack Terraform • Ansible • AWS • Azure • Kubernetes • Docker • Git • GitLab CI • Jenkins • GitHub Actions • Linux • Bash • Python • Prometheus • Grafana • Helm • GitOps

Network Automation Engineer

Business Analyst / Knowledge Architect – AI Transformation (Demand Generation) We are seeking a Business Analyst / Knowledge Architect to partner with an AI Engineer on a programme to analyse, optimise and automate Demand Generation and Marketing Operations using AI. The successful consultant will assess how demand generation currently operates, identify opportunities for AI and workflow automation, structure organisational knowledge for AI-enabled solutions, and help define the future operating model required to support scalable, AI-driven marketing operations. This role follows the same BA model being recruited elsewhere within the programme, with the primary difference being the business function under review. What You'll Do<ul><li>Audit and map how demand generation and wider marketing currently operates through stakeholder interviews, workshops and system analysis.</li><li>Quantify manual effort, cycle times, operational costs and business impact; build business cases with clear ROI.</li><li>Identify opportunities for AI, automation and workflow optimisation across marketing and demand generation processes.</li><li>Design taxonomies and knowledge structures for the marketing knowledge base, ensuring information can be effectively consumed by AI systems and RAG pipelines.</li><li>Produce SOPs, process maps, requirements documentation and RACI frameworks.</li><li>Support governance, adoption and handover activities.</li><li>Recommend the future operating model required to support AI-enabled demand generation following project completion.</li></ul>Requirements<ul><li>A specific, evidenced AI/RAG transformation project — able to clearly articulate what AI solution, assistant, copilot or RAG capability your discovery and knowledge work supported, and the business outcomes achieved.</li><li>Strong process discovery, stakeholder interviewing and workshop facilitation experience.</li><li>Knowledge architecture or information architecture experience, including taxonomies, metadata, content structuring and governance.</li><li>Experience preparing business documentation, operational knowledge and processes for AI-enabled consumption.</li><li>Ability to quantify operational processes, manual effort, cycle times, inefficiencies and automation opportunities.</li><li>Strong documentation, operating model design and handover experience.</li><li>Experience working alongside technical delivery teams on transformation initiatives.</li></ul>Highly Desirable<ul><li>Exposure to enterprise search, AI knowledge bases or knowledge management programmes.</li><li>Experience working with HubSpot, Salesforce, marketing operations, customer operations or revenue operations.</li><li>SQL, analytics or strong data literacy.</li><li>Experience within SaaS or technology-led environments.</li></ul>Nice to Have<ul><li>Demand generation or marketing operations experience.</li><li>Confluence, Notion or similar documentation platforms.</li><li>Experience supporting AI-enabled marketing transformation.</li></ul>

Demand Gen. Business Analyst  (Knowledge Architecture & AI Transformation)

Principal Applied Scientist | LLM Benchmarking | Berlin / Munich / Remote in Germany Confidential search for a fast-growing, Series C agentic AI company building conversational AI for global enterprise brands. This isn't a research seat and it isn't a data analytics role. You'd own prompt optimisation and LLM benchmarking end to end: building the evaluation framework that decides which models the company adopts, comparing quality against latency across real production use cases, and generalising that framework so it can eventually judge any model, not just the ones already wired into the product. Six months from now, the ambition is for this to be a benchmark other companies reference. What you'll do <ul><li>Improve and optimise prompts for real production use cases and agent workflows, systematically evaluating performance across different prompting strategies and models.</li><li>Build and maintain benchmarking scenarios that evaluate models (Gemini, GPT-class systems, and whatever comes next) against task performance, end-to-end system integration, latency, and quality.</li><li>Assess new model releases as they land, validate them against our performance and latency requirements, and give data-driven recommendations on whether we adopt them.</li><li>Design and evolve a generalised evaluation framework, starting from our current benchmarking tooling and gradually decoupling it from our core agent system so it can assess any model, including ones we haven't integrated yet.</li><li>Work closely with our agent and platform engineering teams to turn findings into production changes.</li><li>Track quality and latency trends across model versions over time.</li></ul> What you'll need: <ul><li>Strong Python</li><li>Hands on experience with LLMs and prompt engineering</li><li>A real understanding of benchmarking and evaluation methodology</li><li>Systems thinking, you'll be building tooling, not running one off notebooks</li></ul>Research background is a plus, so is experience comparing models at scale. Not a fit if you're a pure analyst or a theoretical researcher who hasn't shipped to production. Berlin or Munich preferred, remote within Germany considered.

Principal Applied Scientist | LLM Benchmarking | Berlin / Munich / Remote in Germany

​Shakir joined Xcede in 2020, he is a skilled Senior Consultant with a demonstrated history of working in the staffing and recruiting industry across the IT space. As his role is delivery focused, Shakir supports the Xcede team on a variety of urgent roles. His primary focus is on contract technology positions across the UK. 

Network Automation Engineer

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Shakir Muhammad

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