[Hiring] Senior Director, Cloud Operations @Foundant + smartsimple

Role Description

You'll own end-to-end cloud operations across Foundant's portfolio of SaaS products, ensuring the availability, performance, and reliability that our clients depend on.

• Lead availability incident management for production environments — driving triage and resolution and running root cause analysis.
• Serve as the primary voice presenting incident readouts and RCAs to internal and external stakeholders.
• Oversee configuration and change management practices across environments, from fully automated CI/CD pipelines to traditional, manually managed infrastructure.
• Manage infrastructure hosting costs across a multi-region footprint (US, Canada, EU, Australia, and UK), balancing performance, regional compliance needs, and efficient infrastructure spend.
• Build and lead a small team of system administrators and SREs, coaching them toward technical excellence and shared accountability for operational outcomes.
• Partner closely with peers in Development, Technical Security, and Support to maintain operational readiness, incident response, and clear handoffs across teams.
• Establish and continuously improve monitoring, alerting, and performance management practices.
• Other duties as assigned.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of progressive experience in cloud operations or infrastructure leadership, including 5+ years in a director-level role.
• Deep, hands-on expertise operating and troubleshooting multi-cloud environments (AWS and Azure).
• Experience managing availability and performance for SaaS products deployed across multiple geographic regions.
• Working knowledge of regional data residency and compliance considerations (e.g., US, Canada, EU, UK, Australia).
• Experience leading availability incident management and root cause analysis for production environments.
• Experience overseeing configuration and change management across both infrastructure-as-code/CI-CD environments and traditional, manually managed release environments.
• Experience managing cloud infrastructure hosting costs at scale, including forecasting and cost-optimization practices.
• Experience building, managing, and developing teams of system administrators and/or Site Reliability Engineers.
• Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field preferred.
• Must be legally eligible to work in the United States.

Requirements

• Strategic Thinking: Translate Foundant's North Star into a clear cloud operations strategy.
• Performance Advancement: Set and hold a high bar for availability and performance across the portfolio.
• Decision-Making: Make timely, well-reasoned calls during live availability incidents.
• Collaboration and Learning: Build genuine working relationships with peers in Development, Technical Security, and Support.
• Change Management: Communicate incident root causes and operational changes with clarity and candor.
• Staff Development: Coach system administrators and SREs with direct, honest feedback.

Benefits

• Commitment to innovation and making a positive impact.
• Competitive salary and benefits, including tuition and lifestyle reimbursements, and mindfulness and fitness initiatives.
• Flexible PTO policy for personal well-being and professional success.
• Opportunities for professional and personal development through collaboration across teams.
• Support for internal mobility to help achieve career goals.
• Autonomy and responsibility to approach work creatively and independently.
• Employee recognition as a core part of our culture.
• Equal opportunity employer committed to building a diverse workforce.
• Accommodations available upon request for candidates participating in all aspects of the selection process.