Lead GCP Cloud Engineer, Salt Lake Sector V, Kolkata
Salt Lake Sector V has a full-time, on-site Lead GCP Cloud Engineer opening, paying up to ₹2,17,000 per month. This is a senior technical leadership seat on the cloud infrastructure team, owning the architecture, security, and scaling of the company's Google Cloud environment as the business grows.
Eight years of relevant experience is the expectation, which is enough time to have made a genuinely bad infrastructure decision once, learned from it, and built the habits that prevent it from happening again. That kind of judgment matters more here than familiarity with any single tool.
The infrastructure has grown quickly and somewhat unevenly over the past couple of years, with different teams standing up their own environments and conventions along the way. Part of this role is bringing coherence to that without slowing down the teams who've gotten used to moving fast on their own terms.
What the role owns
- Design and evolve the company's Google Cloud Platform architecture across multiple environments and projects
- Lead Kubernetes deployments and container orchestration strategy, setting standards other engineers build against
- Own infrastructure-as-code practices using Terraform, keeping environments reproducible and auditable rather than hand-configured
- Build and maintain CI/CD pipelines that move code through testing and into production reliably
- Troubleshoot infrastructure issues across development and production, often the person other engineers escalate to when something's genuinely stuck
- Mentor engineers on GCP and infrastructure practices as the team grows around this role
A recent example of the scope this role handles: consolidating three separately managed GCP projects, each with its own inconsistent naming conventions and access controls, into a single coherent structure without breaking anything actively running on them. That kind of unglamorous but high-stakes cleanup work is a real part of the job, not a side project.
Incident response falls under this role too, and at this level it's less about being the first to touch a broken system and more about knowing when to step back and let someone else drive while staying available to unblock a decision. Leading through an incident calmly, without taking over every keystroke, is a skill in its own right, separate from pure technical ability.
What the role expects from candidates
A four-year technical degree is the baseline; computer science or a closely related engineering discipline both work. A cloud certification through Google Cloud specifically carries the most weight here, given the role's focus, though a strong AWS or Azure background paired with demonstrated GCP experience will still get serious consideration.
Naukri Mitra has tracked lead-level cloud salaries climbing steadily in Kolkata over the past couple of years, as companies compete for a talent pool that's traditionally been thinner outside the usual metro hubs, and this role's compensation reflects that shift directly.
Core technical skills
- Deep, hands-on experience with Google Cloud Platform, not just familiarity from a certification exam
- Kubernetes, including cluster design and operational troubleshooting at scale
- Terraform for infrastructure automation and version-controlled environment management
- Strong scripting ability for automating repetitive operational work
What separates a strong candidate
Experience leading a cloud migration or a major infrastructure consolidation project will stand out clearly during the interview. Familiarity with cost optimization on GCP, actually reducing a real cloud bill rather than just monitoring it, is a genuine differentiator, since a lot of senior candidates can build infrastructure but haven't been asked to make it cheaper without breaking it.
None of these are hard gates for an otherwise strong candidate. Someone with deep Kubernetes and Terraform expertise who's never formally led a cost optimization initiative can still make a compelling case, provided the core architectural instincts and the eight years of hands-on depth are clearly there.
Compensation and what comes with it
Base pay tops out at ₹2,17,000 monthly. The offer includes medical coverage and paid leave as standard, plus a bonus component tied directly to performance rather than a flat annual number. Since the role is on-site, the employer also runs a subsidized cafeteria and offsets the daily commute, and arranges transport for anyone who needs it, depending on where someone's coming from.
Given the seniority and pay band, the hiring team has been explicit that they don't want to lose a strong candidate to a slower process elsewhere, so decisions are made without the usual layers of sign-off that can delay a senior hire.
Team and how the role fits
This position reports into engineering leadership and works closely with a growing group of DevOps and backend engineers who build on top of the infrastructure this role owns. Architecture decisions largely sit with this person once ramped up, rather than moving through a slow committee process.
Salt Lake Sector V is one of Kolkata's established IT hubs, and the office sits within reasonable reach of most parts of the city by public transport. It's a fairly dense stretch of tech offices, so lunch and evening commute options are plentiful compared to some of the newer, more spread-out developments elsewhere in the city.
There's a real expectation of technical leadership here beyond just individual output. Junior and mid-level engineers will look to this role for guidance on GCP best practices, and part of the job is building that capability across the team rather than being the only person who understands how the infrastructure actually works.
That mentorship happens mostly through code review and architecture discussions rather than formal training sessions. It's a working style that suits someone who'd rather teach through real decisions than through slide decks, and who's comfortable with their own architectural choices being questioned by engineers still building their experience.
How to apply
Submit a resume that details specific GCP services worked with at scale, along with any infrastructure consolidation, migration, or cost optimization work completed. The interview includes a technical deep dive into real architecture decisions rather than abstract cloud trivia, since that's a far better predictor of fit for a role at this level.
Candidates with deep AWS or Azure backgrounds who've more recently picked up GCP shouldn't rule this out based on years-on-platform alone. What matters most in the actual evaluation is whether the underlying architectural thinking translates, since core cloud concepts overlap heavily across providers, even when specific service names differ.
