Director of Cloud Operations, Horizon3

• As a remote first company, we require minimum 25Mbps consumer grade broadband connection
• This role requires a rare combination of deep technical expertise, strategic vision, and hands-on leadership
• You'll be equally comfortable reviewing Terraform configurations, presenting operational metrics to the board, and mentoring engineering managers on best practices
• 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)
• Experience with FinOps practices and cloud financial management

Desirable

• As Director of Cloud Operations, you’ll lead our cloud infrastructure and platform engineering teams as we scale our SaaS platform globally
• Reporting to the VP of Engineering, you'll lead a growing team of platform and data engineers through two engineering managers, driving the architecture, security, and scalability of our cloud infrastructure that powers our autonomous penetration testing platform
• 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
• This is a highly visible leadership role central to Horizon3.ai’s mission of delivering continuous, autonomous security testing at scale