Director, Technical Operations (Platform)

Goway Travel; Toronto; On-site; CAD 150,000 - 170,000; Full time

Job summary

Goway Travel in Toronto, Ontario, is seeking a Director of Technical Operations to own the reliability of our reservations platform, its infrastructure and the data pipelines that power travel experiences. You will define the practice, establish SLOs, incident response and change control while partnering with technology leaders to raise operational standards across the organization.

You will lead AWS-focused platform operations, cost governance and vendor relationships, drive automation, and

Qualifications

• 8+ years in platform operations or similar, including 5+ years in leadership.
• Proven accountability for availability of revenue-critical platform.
• Built operational practice with SLOs, incident management, change control, observability.
• Hands-on depth in AWS with cost management.
• Experience governing third-party platforms and integrations with vendors SLAs.
• Ability to set standards and drive adoption across teams.
• Ability to communicate operational risk and performance.

Responsibilities

• Define, publish and report service levels and service-level objectives for revenue-critical services.
• Own incident management end to end: severity definitions, escalation, incident command, communication during an incident, and post-incident review with corrective actions.
• Own RCA and problem management.
• Own change and release management as a company standard, balancing delivery throughput against change failure rate.
• Build observability sufficient to detect degradation.
• Own disaster recovery and business continuity for platform services, tested and documented on a stated cadence.
• Monitoring of integration paths, error and failure-rate thresholds, and defined fallback behaviour when a partner degrades.
• Maintain a dependency map of the external platforms our revenue-generating flows rely on, with assessed operational risk and mitigation for each.
• Own operational readiness for new integrations and new product lines entering the platform.
• Own the operational reliability of automation and data pipelines in production.
• Day-to-day operation of the AWS and managed hosting infrastructure serving our platform estate.
• Own hosting cost governance: visibility by service, a unit-cost measure, and an annual optimisation target.
• Lead capacity planning against forecast booking and travel volumes.
• Reduce manual, repeatable operational work through automation.
• Address seasonal capacity planning, change freezes and enhanced coverage aligned to our booking and departure peaks and to new product launches.
• Platform, hosting and integration partner relationships: SLA definition, enforcement and structured performance review.
• Reduce single points of dependency, whether on a vendor or an individual.
• Partner with security on vulnerability management, patch compliance, access control and audit readiness.
• Build and maintain a multi-year technical operations roadmap aligned to Goway's growth plans.
• Report operational performance, risk and investment needs to the CTO and executive team in business terms.

Skills

Leadership

Communication

Strategic planning

Incident management

Observability

Education

Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, engineering or equivalent practical experience

Tools

AWS

Cost management

Multi-environment operation

Infrastructure as code

Container orchestration

Job description

Job Details

Job Type: Permanent Full Time

Location: Full Onsite - Toronto, Ontario

Reporting to: Chief Technology Officer

Salary: $150,000 – $170,000 CAD

Job Purpose

The Director, Technical Operations owns the operational health of the platforms Goway sells and services travel on: our reservations platform, the infrastructure it runs on, the supplier, air and distribution integrations it depends on, and the automation and data pipelines built around it.

This is a practice-building role. You will define and own Goway's technical operations discipline: service levels, incident management, change control, observability and operational readiness, and you will make them the standard across our technology organisation.

You will work alongside other Technology leaders.

You will own the technology operations of our platform. You will have the CTO's mandate and backing to build the practice.

Reliability and service management

• Define, publish and report service levels and service-level objectives for revenue-critical services, starting with quoting, booking, payment and traveller servicing.
• Own incident management end to end: severity definitions, escalation, incident command, communication during an incident, and post-incident review with corrective actions.
• Own RCA and problem management.
• Own change and release management as a company standard, balancing delivery throughput against change failure rate.
• Build observability sufficient to detect degradation.
• Own disaster recovery and business continuity for platform services, tested and documented on a stated cadence.

Integration and supplier platform operations

• Monitoring of integration paths, error and failure-rate thresholds, and defined fallback behaviour when a partner degrades.
• Maintain a dependency map of the external platforms our revenue-generating flows rely on, with assessed operational risk and mitigation for each.
• Own operational readiness for new integrations and new product lines entering the platform.
• Own the operational reliability of automation and data pipelines in production.

Platform and cloud operations

• Day-to-day operation of the AWS and managed hosting infrastructure serving our platform estate: environments, provisioning, patching and lifecycle management.
• Own hosting cost governance: visibility by service, a unit-cost measure, and an annual optimisation target.
• Lead capacity planning against forecast booking and travel volumes.
• Reduce manual, repeatable operational work through automation.
• Address seasonal capacity planning, change freezes and enhanced coverage aligned to our booking and departure peaks and to new product launches.

Vendors, partners and compliance

• Platform, hosting and integration partner relationships: SLA definition, enforcement and structured performance review.
• Reduce single points of dependency, whether on a vendor or an individual.
• Partner with security on vulnerability management, patch compliance, access control and audit readiness.

Practice leadership and stakeholder engagement

• Build and maintain a multi-year technical operations roadmap aligned to Goway's growth plans.
• Report operational performance, risk and investment needs to the CTO and executive team in business terms.

What are we looking for?

Required

• 8 or more years in platform operations, technical operations, infrastructure or site reliability engineering, including 5 or more years in a lead or leadership capacity.
• Demonstrated accountability for the availability and performance of a revenue-critical transactional platform.
• Evidence of having built operational practice where little existed: SLOs, incident management, change control and observability introduced from the ground up, with measurable improvement to show for it.
• Hands-on depth in AWS, including cost management and multi-environment operation.
• Substantial experience operating and governing third‑party platforms and integrations, including holding vendors to service levels.
• Ability to set standards and drive adoption across teams.
• Ability to communicate operational risk and performance.

Preferred

• Experience stabilising and operationalising new systems.
• Infrastructure-as-code and container orchestration experience.
• AWS Certified DevOps Engineer (Professional), or AWS Certified CloudOps Engineer (Associate). Solutions Architect certifications are welcome, but less relevant to this role than the operations-focused ones.
• Bachelor's degree in computer science, information technology, engineering or equivalent practical experience.

What can you expect from Goway?

• Imagine working for a company where your career feels like an adventure. At Goway, you’ll join a global community that supports one another:
• We offer a competitive salary accompanied by performance incentives, and we place real importance on time away from work, such as paid personal days for when life calls for them and your birthday off each year.
• Our commitment to professional growth means you’ll have access to continuous learning and industry-leading training that keeps you at the forefront of travel innovation.
• You’ll enjoy generous paid time off, including [three] weeks of vacation, [six] personal days, and a dedicated day off to celebrate your birthday.
• Travel is in our DNA, so you’ll enjoy exclusive perks and discounts on worldwide getaways.
• Since we operate across Toronto, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Manila, Sydney, and beyond, you’ll collaborate across cultures and shape a career path that reflects your ambitions.
• Goway is an equal-opportunity employer. We celebrate differences and are committed to fostering an inclusive workplace for everyone. We appreciate every applicant’s interest. Please be advised that only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

About Goway

Founded in Toronto in 1970 by Australian economist Bruce Hodge, Goway has evolved from a one‑person dream into a family‑owned global leader in tailor‑made travel. With our headquarters in Toronto and hubs in Vancouver, Los Angeles, Sydney, and Manila, our team