Director, Technical Operations - Infrastructure

Accommodations Plus International; Markham; On-site; CAD 160,000 - 180,000; Full time

Job summary

Accommodations Plus International (API) is looking for a Director of Technical Operations - Infrastructure based in Markham, Ontario. The director will be responsible for the reliability and scalability of API's cloud-based platform while managing teams across New York and Pune. The ideal candidate will have over 15 years of experience in technology operations.

Compensation ranges between 160,000 and 180,000 CAD depending on experience, with opportunities for institutional collaboration and career growth.

Qualifications

• 15+ years of progressive technology operations experience.
• At least 5 years in a senior director-level or equivalent leadership role.
• Experience managing geographically distributed teams.

Responsibilities

• Oversee AWS cloud environment governance and operational management.
• Define SLAs and uptime commitments for production systems.
• Lead technology vendor relationships for cloud and infrastructure tooling.

Skills

Leadership in technical operations

AWS knowledge

Financial acumen

Cloud infrastructure management

Disaster recovery planning

Cross-cultural collaboration

Education

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or related field

Master’s degree or MBA preferred

Tools

Datadog

CloudWatch

Grafana

AWS services (EC2, S3, etc.)

Job description

Overview

Director, Technical Operations - Infrastructure at Accommodations Plus International (API). Location: Markham, Ontario, Canada; operates across New York and Pune, India. API focuses on driving innovation in travel and transportation, partnering with airlines, cruise lines, and rail operators to improve layover operations, customer experience, and long-term growth.

Our mission is to make layovers simpler and more efficient for crew members. API’s platform powers millions of crew room nights annually and supports global aviation operations through a distributed workforce. We value ownership, skill development, and work that matters, with opportunities for long-term career growth.

Role purpose

The Director of Technical Ops - Infrastructure is a senior technology leader responsible for the reliability, scalability, performance, and security of API's cloud-based platform and underlying infrastructure. This role oversees governance and operational management of the AWS cloud environment, system reliability and service continuity, and acts as the primary liaison between technology operations and the business. The candidate should balance deep cloud expertise with strong people leadership, financial acumen, and the ability to partner with executive stakeholders to align infrastructure strategy with organizational goals.

Essential Functions

• Lead, mentor, and develop distributed technical operations teams across New York and Pune, India, fostering a collaborative, high-performance culture across time zones and cultures.
• Define team structure, roles, and career development frameworks for engineers and site reliability engineers (SREs) across both locations.
• Establish clear goals, KPIs, and performance expectations; conduct regular performance reviews and provide ongoing coaching and feedback.
• Partner with HR and talent acquisition to recruit and retain top-tier technical talent in both New York and Pune; build a deep bench of operational expertise.
• Facilitate cross-functional collaboration between the technical operations team and product engineering, security, data, and business teams to ensure operational requirements are integrated into the software development lifecycle.

Cloud Infrastructure & AWS

• Own governance and operational management of API's AWS cloud environment, including multi-account strategy, security controls, compliance posture, and cost management.
• Drive cloud cost optimization efforts including Reserved Instances and Savings Plans management, rightsizing, resource tagging governance, and FinOps practices to maximize infrastructure ROI.
• Establish and enforce AWS security best practices (IAM least-privilege, SCPs, GuardDuty, Security Hub, AWS Config, CloudTrail) across all environments.
• Oversee multi-region and multi-AZ strategies to support disaster recovery objectives, minimize RTO/RPO, and maintain continuous service availability for global customers.
• Evaluate new AWS services and infrastructure technologies and present adoption recommendations to senior leadership.

System Reliability & Service Continuity

• Define and own SLAs and uptime commitments for all production systems; set reliability targets with product engineering leadership and report performance to executives.
• Oversee monitoring and observability using tools such as CloudWatch, Datadog, Grafana, or equivalent to ensure proactive issue detection.
• Drive capacity planning to support growth while balancing performance and cost.
• Own IT disaster recovery and business continuity plans; lead regular tabletop exercises and failover testing.

Strategy, Governance & Stakeholder Engagement

• Develop and execute a multi-year operational roadmap aligned with product strategy and technology vision; provide regular operational reporting to senior leadership.
• Lead technology vendor relationships for cloud, infrastructure tooling, and managed services; manage contracts, SLAs, and vendor performance.
• Ensure regulatory and data privacy compliance (SOC 2, GDPR, PCI-DSS, ISO 27001) as it applies to infrastructure and operations; partner with security on audit readiness.
• Manage the IT disaster recovery and business continuity plans; oversee budget and forecasting for the technical operations function.

Competencies

• Proven leadership in building and scaling distributed technical teams across geographies and time zones.
• Executive presence with the ability to translate complex concepts for C-suite and board audiences.
• Strategic yet hands-on, able to set long-term infrastructure vision and ensure day-to-day operational excellence.
• Strong AWS, cloud-native patterns, networking, and security knowledge; respected by engineering teams.
• Financial acumen with experience managing multi-million-dollar cloud budgets and driving cost optimization.
• Culturally aware and skilled at cross-timezone collaboration (US and India).
• Data-driven decision making using metrics, SLOs, and KPIs; commitment to engineering excellence and blameless culture.

Position Type, Hours & Travel

This is a full-time, exempt position based in New York, NY, with collaboration across New York and Pune. Core hours are Monday–Friday; flexibility is expected for time zone differences. Occasional evening availability may be required. Travel: occasional domestic travel as needed.

Required Education & Experience

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, or related field; Master’s degree or MBA preferred; equivalent experience considered.
• 15+ years of progressive technology operations experience, with at least 5 years in a senior director-level or equivalent leadership role managing technical teams.
• Experience managing geographically distributed teams across multiple countries; India experience strongly preferred.
• Strong working knowledge of AWS services (EC2, ECS, EKS, Lambda; S3, EFS, EBS; VPC, Transit Gateway, Route 53, CloudFront; RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache; IAM, GuardDuty, Security Hub, WAF, Shield).
• Proven track record of highly available, multi-region production systems with aggressive uptime SLA goals; cloud-native environment experience.
• Experience managing cloud budgets, FinOps practices, and presenting financials to executives.
• Experience with security and compliance frameworks (SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, GDPR, PCI-DSS).
• Experience owning observability and monitoring platforms (Datadog, CloudWatch, Grafana) and using metrics-driven health indicators.
• Experience with disaster recovery and business continuity programs with testing and executive reporting.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect or equivalent preferred.

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience leading technical operations at SaaS or cloud-native companies serving enterprise customers with high availability and security needs.
• Knowledge of database reliability engineering: RDS/Aurora management, performance tuning, failover testing, backup/recovery.
• Networking knowledge including BGP, SD-WAN, MPLS, VPN, and zero-trust frameworks.
• Familiarity with service management and change management tools (e.g., ServiceNow, Jira Service Management).
• Experience in travel technology or high-volume, customer-facing SaaS environments.
• Exposure to ML/AI infrastructure considerations on AWS.

Success Metrics

• Infrastructure stability, uptime, and performance against SLAs.
• Cost optimization results and FinOps effectiveness.
• Security posture, compliance readiness, and governance across AWS.
• High-performing distributed teams with clear career frameworks and low attrition.
• Validated disaster recovery capabilities through drills and testing.
• Delivery of infrastructure roadmap milestones aligned with product and growth objectives.

Compensation: 160,000 – 180,000 CAD, commensurate with experience.

EEO & Privacy

AAP/EEO Statement: Accommodations Plus International is an Equal Opportunity Employer that does not discriminate on protected characteristics. Our policy covers recruitment, hiring, promotion, transfer, and compensation. Privacy statements apply to role-related communications and data processing.