Director of Cloud Operations, Firstup
$200-228k
Workplace communication platform
Be an early applicant
Workplace communication platform
201-500 employees
Be an early applicant
$200-228k
201-500 employees
Company mission
To improve the employee experience at every moment that matters, large and small.
Role
Who you are
- This role is ideal for a leader who combines deep technical expertise with a pragmatic approach to improving systems, processes, and team capabilities
- 10+ years in cloud infrastructure, SRE, or DevOps roles, with recent experience leading CloudOps/SRE teams
- Proven track record of leading operational or platform transformations in a SaaS environment
- Experience operating multi-region, customer-facing systems at scale
- Strong hands-on experience with:
- AWS (multi-region architectures)
- Kubernetes (EKS) and containerized environments
- Infrastructure as Code (Terraform preferred)
- CI/CD pipelines (CircleCI or similar)
- Observability platforms (Datadog or equivalent)
- Solid understanding of microservices and distributed systems design
- Familiarity with serverless architectures and modern cloud-native patterns
- Deep experience with incident management, on-call operations, and reliability engineering practices
- Strong understanding of SLO/SLI frameworks, monitoring strategies, and performance optimization
- Demonstrated ability to balance hands-on technical work with team leadership
- Collaborative, pragmatic leader who can influence across teams and functions
- Passion for building and supporting high-performing teams
- Focus on continuous improvement, with a bias toward measurable outcomes
What the job involves
- We are seeking a Director of Cloud Operations (CloudOps) to lead and evolve our cloud infrastructure and operational practices across a globally distributed SaaS platform
- This is a hands-on leadership role responsible for ensuring the reliability, scalability, and efficiency of our systems running across multiple AWS regions in the United States and Europe
- As part of the senior leadership team, you will partner closely with Engineering, Security, and Product to strengthen operational excellence, enhance system observability, and drive continuous improvement in how we build and run services
- You will lead a distributed team of engineers across the US and UK, fostering a high-performing, collaborative, and growth-oriented environment
- Own the availability, performance, and resilience of our multi-region AWS platform
- Drive improvements in system reliability through well-defined SLIs/SLOs, error budgets, and proactive engineering practices
- Lead efforts to reduce MTTR and improve incident response effectiveness across the organization
- Guide architecture decisions for microservices, Kubernetes (EKS), and serverless workloads to ensure scalability and fault tolerance
- Advance our observability strategy using Datadog, ensuring actionable insights across infrastructure and applications
- Establish and refine incident management practices, including on-call processes, escalation paths, and post-incident reviews
- Act as an incident commander for critical events and contribute to the on-call rotation
- Elevate operational standards through automation, standardization, and adoption of modern best practices
- Drive cost optimization initiatives across AWS environments without compromising performance or reliability
- Leverage AI and automation to improve operational efficiency, accelerate root cause analysis, and enhance system insights
- Continuously improve CI/CD pipelines (CircleCI) and infrastructure-as-code practices (Terraform)
- Lead, mentor, and support a distributed team of CloudOps engineers across the US and UK
- Foster a culture of accountability, learning, and continuous improvement
- Provide technical guidance while enabling the team to grow in ownership and capability
- Oversee ongoing operations of a legacy .NET-based solution hosted in private data centers in the US and Europe
- Ensure stability and support for existing customers while maintaining clear operational boundaries with the cloud platform
Our take
As hybrid and remote work models become commonplace, workplace communication struggles to keep pace. many companies now grapple with burnout and digital fatigue, compounded by the absence of regular face-to-face interaction, leaving HR teams and managers searching for effective engagement strategies.
Enter Firstup, a solution designed to tackle this challenge head-on. It offers a workplace communication platform that seamlessly integrates with a company's HR systems. By tapping into data from recruitment, performance management, talent acquisition, and other sources, first build detailed employee profiles. This enables companies to craft and deliver personalised engagement initiatives, ultimately enhancing productivity and retention rates.
With a track record of success, Firstup has recently surpassed the $100M mark in annual recurring revenue and clinched the prestigious 2023 HR Tech Award for Employee Experience. Already trusted by over 40% of the Fortune 100, including industry giants like Amazon, Holton, and Ford, Firstup is poised to continue growth. Its ability to adapt to the evolving needs of the modern workforce ensures it remains a key player in the realm of workplace communication and engagement.
Steph
Company Specialist at Welcome to the Jungle
Insights
2% employee growth in 12 months
Company
Company benefits
- Health Coverage: Doing your best starts with feeling your best. We provide fully paid medical, dental, and vision for employees, plus 70% for dependents
- Flexible Time Off: You can’t mobilize if you don’t rest and recharge—so take as much paid time off as you need
- Fruity Umbrella Drink Bonus: When we say we want you to take time off, we mean it. To encourage you, we offer extra compensation when you take time off in full-week increments
- Retirement Plan: There’s life beyond work, and someday there will be a lot of it. We’ll help you save for that time
- Professional Development: We invest in our people and build their skills for the future of work—no matter where that future takes them
- Family Leave: We support making big changes, and nothing will change your life more than bringing a child into your family. That’s why we offer 12 weeks of fully paid family leave for all parents
- Volunteer PTO: We give you paid days off to give back because we want our workforce to be a force for good
- Commuter Benefits: Although much of our workforce is remote, when we do head into the office, we subsidize eco-friendly ways to get there
Company HQ
Financial District, San Francisco, CA
Leadership
Nicole Alvino
(Co-Founder, Chairwoman & CEO)Previously the founder and CEO of Dermalounge. They also worked at Enron Europe as an Analyst and Associate.
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