Contract Azure Software Engineer Jobs in Lexington, MA

At National Grid, we keep people connected and society moving. But it's so much more than that. National Grid supplies us with the environment to make it happen. As we generate momentum in the energy transition for all, we don't plan on leaving any of our customers in the dark. So, join us as a Staff Software Engineer and find your superpower. 

National Grid is hiring a Staff Software Engineer.  This role operates under a hybrid working model and is open to candidates based in either our Waltham, MA or Brooklyn, NY office locations. Hybrid work expectations are subject to business needs and company policy.

As a Staff Software Engineer - Platform Integration, you'll take on a critical technical leadership role delivering and integrating the Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) within National Grid's US Electric organization. You will join the Platform Integration Engineering (PIE) team responsible for the end-to-end integration of DERMS platform with National Grid's on-premises and Azure hybrid infrastructure. 

• Hands-on contributions with code development, integration scripting, and system configuration across DERMS environments (PDS, QAS, Production). 

• Support the architectural design and lead the implementation of cloud integration patterns connecting on-premises DERMS systems with Azure services. 

• Own the software integration lifecycle including environment provisioning support, configuration migration pipelines (PDS to Production/QAS) 

• Design, build, and maintain automated provisioning pipelines for VM infrastructure and virtual components across Azure and on-premises environments using Infrastructure-as-Code (Terraform, Bicep, ARM templates) and configuration management tools (Ansible, PowerShell DSC). 

• Work with DevOps engineers to implement CI/CD automation for infrastructure changes, enabling repeatable and auditable deployments across hybrid environments with proper approval gates and rollback capabilities. 

• Design and implement observability solutions (monitoring, logging, alerting, and tracing) across all DERMS environments using the LGTM stack (Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for distributed tracing, Mimir for metrics) to ensure real-time visibility into system health, interface data flows, and infrastructure performance. 

• Establish SLIs, SLOs, and automated alerting for DERMS platform components, ODB interfaces, and VM infrastructure to enable proactive incident detection and support availability test compliance. 

• Collaborate with vendor engineering teams during remote software installation, Factory Acceptance Testing (FAT), and Site Acceptance Testing (SAT). 

• Lead end-to-end interface integration testing across multiple jurisdictions ensuring data flow integrity and system reliability. 

• Write well-designed, testable, scalable, and efficient integration code including RESTful APIs, AQMP, and data transformation pipelines. 

• Provide technical support for security testing coordination, vulnerability remediation, and system hardening activities. 

• Collaborate with business and technical stakeholders including Grid Operations, IT Infrastructure, Cybersecurity, and the Business Integrator on integration deliverables. 

• Provide support and mentorship to the engineering team on integration patterns, DERMS domain knowledge, and operational technology (OT) best practices. 

• Contribute to IT standards, procedures, and processes for utility-grade platform integration. 

• 8+ years of experience in software development with a focus on systems integration and platform engineering. 

• Ability to collaborate with cross functional teams including vendor engineering, infrastructure, cybersecurity, and testing engineers. 

• Hands-on technical experience with Azure (hybrid cloud, Azure Arc, Azure DevOps), Python, PowerShell, .NET Core, PostgreSQL, message brokers (Kafka, RabbitMQ, or similar), and CI/CD pipelines (GitHub Actions or Azure DevOps) with a strong emphasis on infrastructure automation. 

• Demonstrated experience designing and implementing system interfaces (RESTful, GraphQL, gRPC, etc). 

• Strong experience with infrastructure automation and VM provisioning pipelines: Terraform for Azure resource deployment; Ansible, PowerShell DSC, or similar for on-premises VM configuration and application deployment. 

• Hands-on experience automating Azure virtual infrastructure (VMs, VNets, NSGs, Private Link, Azure Arc) and on-premises virtualization platforms (VMware vSphere, Hyper-V) including automated OS provisioning, patching, and compliance enforcement. 

• Demonstrated ability to build fully automated, idempotent deployment pipelines that provision, configure, and validate multi-tier application environments from code with zero manual intervention. 

• Experience designing and operating observability platforms using the LGTM stack (Loki, Grafana, Tempo, Mimir) or equivalent. Familiarity with OpenTelemetry instrumentation, Promtail/Alloy for log collection, and Grafana alerting for hybrid on-prem/cloud environments. 

• Demonstrated ability to define SLIs/SLOs, build alerting frameworks, and implement automated runbooks for infrastructure and application health in hybrid on-prem/cloud environments. 

• Ability to explain complex technical concepts to non-technical audiences including grid operations staff and executive stakeholders. 

• Strong knowledge of the agile software development process including PI Planning ceremonies. 

• Solid communication and documentation skills. 

Nice to Have 

• Experience with SCADA systems, OT/IT convergence, or utility/energy sector platforms. 

• Experience with OT protocols such as ICCP, DNP3, or IEEE 2030.5.