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Horizon3.ai · 2 weeks ago

Senior Director of Cloud Operations

United States

Full-time

Remote

Director/Executive

$250K/yr - $300K/yr

10+ years exp

Horizon3.ai is a fast-growing, remote cybersecurity company dedicated to enabling organizations to proactively find, fix and verify exploitable attack vectors. The Senior Director of Cloud Operations will lead cloud infrastructure and platform engineering teams, driving the architecture, security, and scalability of the cloud infrastructure that supports the company's autonomous penetration testing platform.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)Cyber SecurityEnterprise SoftwareMachine LearningNetwork Security

Responsibilities

Guide architectural design and oversee implementation of our SaaS product across multiple regions

Create and execute multi-year technology roadmaps for cloud operations, aligning infrastructure strategy with business objectives and revenue goals

Identify and evaluate emerging cloud technologies and create adoption roadmaps, presenting potential impacts on business growth to the board

Lead our multi-cluster Kubernetes strategy

Lead vendor evaluation and management, negotiating SLAs based on real-world implementation experience to support global SaaS expansion

Understand best practices for multi-region cloud infrastructure deployment using modern infrastructure-as-code tooling

Accountable for optimizing our cloud infrastructure platform and product CI/CD pipelines, leveraging software engineering expertise to reduce downtime and accelerate feature releases

Oversee real-time monitoring systems (Prometheus, Datadog, CloudWatch) with intelligent alerting and auto-scaling features, based on practical experience in troubleshooting and enhancing cloud service reliability

Execute multi-region failover systems and backup strategies, ensuring business continuity through practical implementation and regular disaster recovery drills

Conduct load testing and predictive modeling for user growth, using engineering tools to proactively scale infrastructure and avoid bottlenecks in global markets

Guide architectural decisions and mentor technical leaders

Create and implement strategies for cloud cost optimization, such as rightsizing resources, leveraging spot instances, and reserved capacity planning, with data-driven analysis to report savings and ROI to the board

Establish and monitor SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs for all critical services, driving continuous improvement in uptime, performance, and reliability

Establish on-call rotation practices, ensure effective incident response, and conduct thorough post-mortems to prevent recurrence

Establish analytics dashboards for operational insights, enabling evidence-based recommendations to optimize for enterprise and new market expansion

Ensure cloud infrastructure meets global compliance requirements including GDPR, CCPA, FedRAMP, CMMC, and data sovereignty standards

Partner with Security to establish response protocols for cloud-based threats, including integrating our cloud environments with security tools like SIEM and CSPM systems

Collaborate with security teams to implement security hardening, vulnerability management, and zero-trust architecture principles

Ensure SOC 2, ISO 27001 compliance and maintain audit readiness across all cloud environments

Lead, mentor, and grow organization of engineers across platform and data infrastructure, fostering a culture of hands-on engineering excellence

Manage engineering managers directly, developing their leadership capabilities and ensuring effective team performance

Foster a culture of continuous learning, emphasizing agile methodologies, DevOps best practices, practical AI-tool adoption, and cross-functional collaboration

Drive hiring strategy to scale the team in alignment with company growth, establishing interview processes and technical assessments

Prepare concise reports on operational KPIs such as uptime, response times, incident metrics, cost efficiency, and security posture, tailored to highlight strategic risks and opportunities for board and executive audiences

Partner with Product, Go-to-Market, and Engineering leadership to align infrastructure capabilities with product roadmap and customer commitments

Present technical strategies and business cases to C-suite executives, translating complex technical concepts into business value

Qualification

Cloud infrastructure engineeringInfrastructure as CodeKubernetes managementCI/CD pipelinesCloud cost optimizationSecurity complianceMonitoring toolsDatabase technologiesExecutive communicationStakeholder managementTeam leadershipProject managementSoft skills

Required

10+ years in cloud infrastructure/platform engineering with 5+ years leading teams of 15+ engineers in high-growth startups

Expertise in Infrastructure as Code (Terraform, CloudFormation, Ansible) and CI/CD pipelines (Jenkins, GitLab CI/CD, GitHub Actions)

Experience managing multi-region Kubernetes environments; GitOps experience strongly preferred

Proven ability to build, scale, and retain high-performing engineering teams in remote or distributed environments

Exceptional communication skills with ability to influence and align stakeholders at all levels, from engineers to board members

Track record of translating business requirements into technical strategies and vice versa

Experience managing budgets, forecasting costs, and demonstrating ROI on infrastructure investments

Strong project management skills with ability to balance multiple priorities and drive execution

Bachelor's or Master's degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or related technical field

Expert-level knowledge of container orchestration platforms (Kubernetes, Docker, ECS/EKS)

Deep understanding of networking, security, and compliance in cloud environments

Proficiency with monitoring, logging, and observability tools (Prometheus, Grafana, Datadog, ELK stack, Splunk)

Experience with database technologies at scale (PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB, Redis) and data pipeline architectures

Strong understanding of security best practices, including zero-trust architecture, secrets management, and vulnerability remediation

Familiarity with compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, GDPR, CCPA, FedRAMP)

Preferred

Relevant cloud certifications (AWS Certified Solutions Architect Professional, Azure Solutions Architect Expert, Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect, or equivalent)

Experience in cybersecurity, security operations, or related domains

Background in SaaS companies that have successfully scaled from Series B through IPO or acquisition

Experience with FinOps practices and cloud financial management

Contributions to open-source projects or technical thought leadership