Head of Cloud & Platform Engineering

Role Overview

We seek an accomplished leader to spearhead the strategy, engineering, and transformation of a sophisticated enterprise cloud and container platform. This senior leadership role demands expertise in cloud architecture, platform engineering, operational resilience, financial oversight, and team management. The primary goal is to shift the cloud function from a primarily operations-based model to an automated, engineering-driven, self-service platform framework while engaging with senior stakeholders to deliver large-scale transformation.

Key Responsibilities

• Define and implement a long-term vision and roadmap for cloud and container platforms at the enterprise level.
• Set architecture principles, decide workload placement strategies, and prioritize platform investments.
• Translate strategic goals into well-structured programs with defined deliverables and measurable results.
• Lead engineering and operations efforts for cloud and container environments, enhancing availability, scalability, observability, automation, capacity, resilience, and disaster recovery processes.
• Elevate platform stability by reducing operational incidents through robust engineering standards.
• Develop scalable cloud infrastructure foundations emphasizing identity management, networking, security, access control, resource governance, and lifecycle management.
• Integrate governance into platform services efficiently to maintain delivery speed while ensuring security and compliance.
• Collaborate closely with security, architecture, and risk teams to uphold appropriate control measures.
• Advance Infrastructure as Code (IaC), automation, DevSecOps, and self-service infrastructure capabilities.
• Drive major cloud migrations, remediation efforts, and platform modernization initiatives.
• Reduce legacy system dependencies and technical debt to enhance platform maturity.
• Oversee cloud consumption monitoring, forecasting, cost allocation, and financial optimization.
• Enforce financial transparency and accountability relating to cloud resource usage.
• Manage technology vendors, licensing agreements, and commercial performance effectively.
• Engage with cross-functional teams across infrastructure, architecture, cybersecurity, application engineering, and data to align priorities.
• Effectively communicate complex technical, investment, risk, and transformation decisions to senior leadership.
• Foster alignment among stakeholders with diverse technical and business priorities.
• Build and nurture a high-performing cloud and platform engineering team.
• Develop senior technical and leadership talents within the function.
• Establish clear responsibilities, encourage delegation, and ensure succession planning to mitigate key-person dependencies.

Qualifications and Experience

• Extensive enterprise-level experience with AWS and/or Microsoft Azure platforms.
• Deep understanding of Kubernetes and enterprise container orchestration platforms.
• Proven track record designing and implementing enterprise cloud strategies and transformation roadmaps.
• Leadership experience in large-scale cloud migrations, platform modernization, or transformation programs.
• Expertise in cloud architecture, governance, identity and access management, network security, and operational resilience.
• Hands-on familiarity with Infrastructure as Code, automation methodologies, DevSecOps, and creation of self-service platform engineering capabilities.
• Strong knowledge of hybrid cloud environments and strategic workload placement.
• Experience managing cloud financials, including cost optimization, forecasting, and FinOps principles.
• Proven skills managing commercial aspects such as licensing, vendor relationships, and technology procurement.
• Ability to navigate both strategic planning and detailed technical discussions with ease.

Experience with enterprise Kubernetes distributions like OpenShift or similar platforms is a plus.

Leadership Attributes

The ideal candidate will combine profound technical expertise with enterprise-wide accountability. They must be comfortable transforming ambiguous technical objectives into clear, actionable goals and independently leading delivery. Constructive challenge of technical decisions, influencing senior leaders, mentoring engineering leaders, and balancing innovation, risk, cost, and quality considerations are critical success factors.

Success Metrics

Success in this role will be achieved by defining a coherent cloud strategy, enhancing platform reliability and governance, expanding automation and self-service capabilities, completing legacy modernization projects, improving financial accountability for cloud costs, and cultivating a strong engineering culture with enhanced autonomy and ownership.

Eligibility

This opportunity is tailored for a seasoned Cloud, Platform Engineering, or Infrastructure leader experienced at significant enterprise scale, eager to take full ownership of the strategic and transformational direction of a major cloud platform environment.