Senior Director - DevOps

We are seeking an experienced Senior Director - DevOps to lead our cloud infrastructure, platform engineering, and DevOps transformation initiatives. This is a strategic leadership role responsible for defining the cloud roadmap, driving platform reliability, and building high-performing engineering organisations. You will lead globally distributed DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering teams while partnering closely with Product, Engineering, Security, and Architecture leaders to deliver highly scalable, secure, and resilient cloud platforms.

The candidate will have responsibilities across the following functions:

Engineering Leadership:

• Lead, mentor, and scale multiple DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE), Platform Engineering, and Infrastructure teams.
• Build and develop engineering managers and senior technical leaders.
• Foster a culture of operational excellence, automation, innovation, and continuous improvement.
• Drive engineering best practices across globally distributed teams.

Cloud Strategy and Platform Architecture:

• Define and execute the enterprise cloud strategy across AWS and/or GCP.
• Lead the architecture and evolution of cloud-native platforms.
• Drive adoption of Kubernetes, Docker, Infrastructure as Code (Terraform), and automation frameworks.
• Establish cloud governance, security, scalability, and reliability standards.

DevOps and Platform Engineering:

• Standardise enterprise CI/CD pipelines and deployment strategies.
• Drive platform engineering initiatives that improve developer productivity.
• Lead Infrastructure as Code (IaC) adoption using Terraform and Ansible.
• Implement GitOps, automation, and self-service platform capabilities.

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE):

• Define and implement SRE practices across engineering organisations.
• Establish SLIs, SLOs, and Error Budget frameworks.
• Improve system reliability, availability, observability, and incident response processes.
• Drive root cause analysis and post-incident improvements.

Operational Excellence:

• Improve platform performance, scalability, and availability.
• Lead cloud cost optimisation and FinOps initiatives.
• Drive enterprise monitoring, logging, and observability strategies.
• Ensure high availability and disaster recovery readiness across platforms.

Security and Compliance:

• Embed DevSecOps practices throughout the software delivery lifecycle.
• Partner with Security teams to strengthen cloud security posture.
• Lead enterprise security audits, compliance initiatives, and governance frameworks.
• Ensure IAM, secrets management, and infrastructure security best practices are implemented.

Cross-Functional Collaboration:

• Partner with Product, Engineering, Architecture, and Security leadership to deliver reliable cloud platforms.
• Influence executive stakeholders on technology strategy and platform investments.
• Align infrastructure and platform capabilities with long-term business objectives.

Requirements:

• 15-20 years of experience in software engineering, infrastructure engineering, cloud platforms, or DevOps.
• 5+ years of experience in Director, Senior Director, or equivalent engineering leadership roles.
• Proven experience leading large, globally distributed engineering organisations.
• Deep expertise in AWS and/or GCP cloud platforms.
• Strong hands-on knowledge of Kubernetes, Docker, Linux, and cloud-native technologies.
• Extensive experience with Infrastructure as Code using Terraform and Ansible.
• Strong understanding of CI/CD pipelines, DevOps automation, and GitOps practices.
• Expertise in observability, monitoring, logging, and Site Reliability Engineering (SRE).
• Experience driving cloud modernisation and large-scale infrastructure transformation programs.
• Proven track record in cloud cost optimisation (FinOps), enterprise security, and governance.
• Excellent stakeholder management, executive communication, and strategic planning skills.

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience building enterprise-scale cloud platforms supporting large engineering organisations.
• Strong understanding of distributed systems, microservices, and cloud-native architecture.
• Experience implementing DevSecOps and Zero Trust security principles.
• Exposure to multi-cloud environments and platform engineering best practices.
• Relevant cloud certifications (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes, Terraform) are a plus.

Good to Have:

• Strategic vision for modern cloud infrastructure and platform engineering.
• Strong people leadership with experience building and scaling high-performing teams.
• A passion for automation, operational excellence, and engineering productivity.
• The ability to balance technical depth with business strategy and organisational leadership.
• A collaborative leadership style with a focus on innovation, reliability, and continuous improvement.