[Hiring] Director of Infrastructure, Security & IT Operations @Clutch

Role Description

We're looking for a Director of Infrastructure, Security & IT Operations to own and scale the infrastructure, security, and IT operations that power Clutch's platform. This role is the single owner of our cloud infrastructure (AWS), security posture, compliance programs, IT operations, and vendor management. You'll report directly to the VP of Engineering and work closely with the CEO, COO, and Legal on strategy. This is a leadership role where you'll define the direction, build the team, and execute with high autonomy.

About the Team

You'll lead a team spanning Infrastructure, Security, and IT. Today the team includes:

• An Infrastructure engineering manager (Lucas Sousa) and his engineers
• Security individual contributors
• A small IT support team

The broader engineering org is about 80 people across Brazil and the US, organized into five areas:

• Lending
• Foundations
• Security and IT
• Account Opening
• Cross-functional teams (HAL AI, Data)

You'll work cross-functionally with every engineering team, plus Finance, Legal, and Customer Success. The culture is direct, accountable, and moves fast. We operate on a "You Build It, You Run It" principle and value completed staff work over escalation.

What You'll Do

Within 3 months, you will:

• Complete a full audit of infrastructure, security posture, vendor accounts, and IT operations. Identify gaps and quick wins.
• Take ownership of all vendor relationships and complete account transfers from the previous director.
• Establish your working relationship with every engineering team, Finance, Legal, and Customer Success.
• Assess and strengthen incident response protocols and cybersecurity monitoring (Datadog SIEM, Cloudflare).
• Evaluate and stabilize IT operations, including support SLAs and the endpoint management program.

Within 6 months, you will:

• Drive vendor rationalization. We have 30+ tools identified for review ($229K in immediate cuts, $1.2M under evaluation). Own the decision-making and execution.
• Implement improvements to our compliance program (SOC 2 Type II, GLBA) and own the next audit cycle.
• Optimize cloud infrastructure costs and performance across our AWS organization (multiple accounts, ECS Fargate, Aurora PostgreSQL).
• Improve sandbox and environment management for customer implementations.
• Define and begin executing on the team structure and hiring plan for your org.

Within 9 months, you will:

• Have a fully staffed and operating Infrastructure, Security & IT Operations org with clear ownership boundaries.
• Advance cloud security and data protection strategies, including improvements to per-partner data segregation and encryption (AES-256, FIPS 140-2 Level 3).
• Lead a company-wide security awareness program and foster a security-first culture across engineering.
• Drive automation and tooling improvements that measurably reduce toil for the broader engineering org.
• Own and present the infrastructure and security roadmap, including infrastructure scaling strategy for the next 12 months.

Qualifications

• 8+ years of experience in infrastructure, security, and/or IT operations leadership, preferably in B2B SaaS or fintech.
• Proven leadership experience managing infrastructure, security, and IT teams in a fast-paced environment.
• Deep knowledge of AWS (ECS Fargate, Aurora PostgreSQL, IAM, KMS, S3, VPC) and infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Terragrunt).
• Strong understanding of security frameworks and compliance standards: SOC 2 Type II, GLBA, CCPA, and ideally PCI DSS.
• Experience owning vendor management and budget optimization at scale.
• Exceptional communication and stakeholder management skills.
• High-autonomy operator who brings completed work and decisions, not problems and questions.

Nice-to-haves

• Experience with Cloudflare, Datadog, Auth0, or similar tooling in our stack.
• Familiarity with credit union or financial services regulatory environment.
• Experience managing IT support operations with SLA-driven workflows.
• Background in Zero Trust architecture and IAM strategy.
• Bilingual English/Portuguese (our engineering team is primarily Brazil-based).

Benefits

• Remote Flexibility: Enjoy the freedom of remote work from anywhere, balancing life and career seamlessly.
• Unforgettable Off-Sites: Twice a year, bond with colleagues in exciting destinations, fostering teamwork and fresh ideas.
• Paid Time Off and National Holidays: Enjoy 20 PTO days yearly and the National Holidays for relaxation and rejuvenation.
• Stock Options: Joining us means having a stake in our success, so you'll receive stock options as part of your compensation package.
• Home Office Setup: Create your ideal workspace with a dedicated budget for home office essentials.
• Work Trip Budget: Grow personally and professionally with a budget for work-related trips and co-working.