Director, Cloud & Infrastructure

Position Overview

The Director of Cloud & Infrastructure (Operations & Build) leads the comprehensive strategy, design, engineering, and operational management of enterprise cloud and infrastructure platforms. This position merges platform architecture and engineering with service operations, ensuring secure, scalable, and resilient infrastructure that aligns with organizational priorities and critical non-functional requirements.

The role involves setting strategic direction for cloud modernization by standardizing platforms, enabling reusable design patterns, and leveraging automation. It ensures high service reliability through strict ownership of service-level objectives, governance, and operational rigor. Operating within a heavily regulated environment, the Director manages compliance, resilience, and business continuity.

This leadership position also guides the adoption of AIOps, formulates cost control and value realization plans for cloud and infrastructure services, and steers vendor and managed service provider relationships to meet security and compliance standards.

Key Responsibilities

• Develop and implement cloud and infrastructure strategies, roadmaps, and operating models aligned with business demands and non-functional requirements.
• Lead technology direction, deployment, and operationalization of cloud and infrastructure platforms enterprise-wide.
• Create service catalogs and reusable platform patterns to guide workload deployment and adoption.
• Drive cloud migration projects, platform standardization, and cloud adoption efforts.
• Provide leadership for AIOps integration, automation, and intelligent observability initiatives.
• Implement cost containment measures and maximize the value of infrastructure and cloud investments.
• Oversee setup of cloud landing zones, hybrid hosting platforms, and essential infrastructure components.
• Establish self-service provisioning through Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and policy-as-code frameworks.
• Define engineering standards, reusable components, and platform governance policies.
• Guide workload placement and scaling strategies based on demand forecasting and standard patterns.
• Take accountability for service reliability and maintain agreed-upon service-level objectives (SLOs).
• Manage incident response, problem resolution, and continuous improvement for critical mission services.
• Champion observability, monitoring, and operational excellence practices.
• Promote AIOps-driven optimization and efficiency improvements in operations.
• Supervise IT Service Management (ITSM) processes including runbooks, SLA/OLA compliance, and change controls.
• Enforce deployment readiness checks with authority to halt releases not meeting operational or resilience criteria.
• Ensure disaster recovery, backup, and business continuity preparedness with documented audit evidence.
• Integrate security, compliance, privacy, and data residency requirements into platform design and operations.
• Manage capacity planning and performance to align with demand and service targets.
• Lead FinOps practices including cost governance, resource tagging, and cost optimization.
• Oversee cost optimization and usage management strategies within cloud and infrastructure environments.
• Manage vendor and managed service provider performance with respect to service, security, and compliance SLAs.
• Build and lead high-performing engineering and operations teams focused on cloud, platform engineering, and site reliability engineering (SRE).
• Drive capability building through coaching, standards development, and enablement programs.
• Foster a culture emphasizing accountability, automation, and continuous improvement.

Candidate Requirements

• At least 10 years of extensive experience in cloud and/or infrastructure encompassing engineering and operational roles.
• Proven leadership track record managing platform, SRE, or infrastructure teams in large, complex environments.
• Demonstrated success delivering enterprise cloud platforms, including establishing landing zones and driving transformation initiatives.
• Experience working in regulated industries or public sector settings requiring audit and compliance adherence.
• Strong expertise in operationalizing infrastructure, transforming services, and executing large-scale optimization projects.
• In-depth knowledge of cloud platforms, hybrid infrastructures, and enterprise hosting solutions.
• Hands-on experience with Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), policy-as-code, and modern platform engineering methodologies.
• Solid foundation in IT Service Management (ITSM) principles and reliability engineering disciplines, such as SLOs and observability.
• Familiarity with AIOps, intelligent monitoring tools, and automation-driven operational models.
• Understanding of disaster recovery (DR), business continuity planning (BCP), resilience testing, FinOps, and managing vendors.
• Strategic, execution-driven leadership with a comprehensive accountability approach.
• Excellent stakeholder management capabilities, including engagement with senior executives.
• Proven capacity to maintain mission-critical, high-availability environments.
• Strong commercial acumen to balance innovation, stability, and cost-effectiveness.
• Experience driving transformational change and standardization at enterprise scale.