Principal Service Desk Analyst (Microsoft Azure)

Location: Hybrid role based in Manchester, England, United Kingdom; other locations include Leeds and London.

Company

hirify.global is a UK-based IT services consultancy delivering transformation, business, and technical solutions primarily for public-sector clients, with a growing private-sector portfolio.

What you will do

• Own complex 3rd-line incidents from investigation through resolution and root-cause analysis.
• Administer, troubleshoot, and improve Microsoft cloud, infrastructure, identity, endpoint, and networking environments.
• Plan and implement production changes, including impact and risk assessment, testing, validation, and rollback planning.
• Act as a technical escalation point for 1st- and 2nd-line engineers.
• Mentor engineers, share technical knowledge, and produce implementation, troubleshooting, support, and handover documentation.
• Manage customer expectations, competing incidents, and technical priorities while maintaining a high standard of customer service.

Requirements

• Strong hands-on experience across Microsoft 365, including Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, and Microsoft Entra ID.
• Strong hands-on administration and troubleshooting experience with Azure services, including virtual machines, storage, networking, identity, and access management.
• Strong knowledge of Entra ID identity and authentication, including Conditional Access, MFA, authentication hirify.global, user and group management, and complex sign-in troubleshooting.
• Hands-on Intune endpoint management experience covering enrolment, configuration profiles, compliance policies, application deployment, and troubleshooting.
• Strong Windows Server experience, including Active Directory Domain Services, Group Policy, DNS, DHCP, and file/print services.
• Azure Monitor experience covering alerts, action groups, Log Analytics workspaces, and monitoring queries.
• Practical networking knowledge covering TCP/IP, DNS, DHCP, VLANs, routing, NAT, VPNs, and Azure networking components such as virtual networks, subnets, NSGs, route tables, and Azure Firewall.
• Ability to write, understand, modify, and troubleshoot PowerShell scripts for administration, troubleshooting, and automation.
• Proven experience in a 3rd-line, infrastructure, systems, or cloud engineering role supporting hybrid on-premises and Microsoft cloud environments.
• Ability to investigate unfamiliar or complex problems independently using diagnostic tools, logs, monitoring platforms, and vendor documentation.
• Ability to provide technical escalation, mentor engineers, communicate complex information to technical and non-technical audiences, manage multiple priorities, and deliver customer service.
• Commitment to continuous professional development and maintaining knowledge of Microsoft cloud, infrastructure, security, and networking technologies.
• Profiles focused primarily on 1st/2nd-line support, basic user administration, hardware support, or escalation to other teams do not meet the requirements.

Nice to have

• Azure Virtual Desktop, Azure App Service, Azure Key Vault, Microsoft Global Secure Access, Bicep, Terraform, and Azure DevOps.
• Azure Enterprise Applications, app registrations, SSO, certificate management, and Microsoft Defender XDR.
• Advanced networking, Cisco ASA, Cisco Meraki, and Ubiquiti UniFi.
• VMware, Hyper-V, Linux server administration, and SQL troubleshooting.
• ITIL knowledge and experience with Incident, Problem, Change, and Service Management processes.
• Relevant Microsoft certifications across Azure, Microsoft 365, Security, Identity, or Endpoint Management.

Culture & Benefits

• Hybrid and flexible working, including home working and part-time options.
• Training, LinkedIn Learning, and a management development programme.
• 25 days of annual leave plus bank holidays, with the option to buy five additional days.
• Private medical insurance, life assurance equal to four times base salary, pension contributions, and worldwide travel insurance.
• Employee assistance programme, enhanced maternity and paternity pay, and two paid volunteering days annually.
• Collaborative work on projects focused on public-sector transformation, plus season-ticket loan and cycle-to-work schemes.