Director - Cloud Operations, Reliability & Engineering (CORE)

Siemens Digital Industries Software; Charlotte (NC); On-site; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Job summary

Siemens Digital Industries Software in Charlotte, NC, seeks a Director of Cloud Operations, Reliability & Engineering to lead a globally distributed organization responsible for the SaaS portfolio's reliability, platform engineering, and automation.

You will build AI Ops capabilities, drive security governance, manage budgets and vendor relations, and partner across product lines to deliver scalable cloud services.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree in CS, SE, IT or related field.
• Master's degree or MBA preferred.
• 12+ years of software engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, or cloud infra experience, with 5+ in a senior leadership role.
• Track record leading 50+ engineers across globally distributed teams.
• Proven ability to influence cross-organizational programs and drive to conclusions.
• Deep cloud-native knowledge across AWS and Azure, Kubernetes, IaC, and CI/CD at scale.
• Working knowledge of security/compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST).
• Proven delivery of AI Ops or intelligent automation that produced measurable impact.

Responsibilities

• Lead globally distributed platform engineering, process engineering, onboarding, AI engineering, automation, and sovereign cloud engineering.
• Deliver tooling, automation, and AI Ops capabilities to enable CORE operations and customer delivery at scale.
• Drive security governance, risk oversight, and compliance across CORE production environments.
• Oversee multi-cloud platform engineering including IaC, Kubernetes, CI/CD, and cloud-native capabilities.
• Manage budgets, vendor relationships, and technology selection to balance build, buy, and partner decisions.

Skills

Leadership

Cloud architecture

DevOps

SaaS operations

AI Ops

Security & compliance

Influence & cross-functional

Cross-functional collaboration

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science/Software Engineering/IT

Master's degree or MBA preferred

Tools

Terraform

Ansible

Kubernetes

ServiceNow

ITIL/ITSM

Job description

We are a leading global software company dedicated to the world of computer aided design, 3D modeling and simulation— helping innovative global manufacturers design better products, faster! With the resources of a large company, and the energy of a software start-up, we have fun together while creating a world class software portfolio. Our culture encourages creativity, welcomes fresh thinking, and focuses on growth, so our people, our business, and our customers can achieve their full potential.

Position Overview

Cloud Operations, Reliability & Engineering (CORE) is an organization within Siemens Digital Industries Software. CORE is responsible for the end-to-end operational lifecycle of Siemens DISW’s SaaS portfolio — from product onboarding and platform engineering through production operations, site reliability, and customer-facing cloud delivery — serving customers across multiple product lines worldwide.

The Director of Cloud Operations, Reliability & Engineering provides the engineering foundations that enable CORE to operate better, faster, and more efficiently. This is the role that builds and delivers the tooling, automation, AI Ops capabilities, and platform services that empower operations, SRE, and customer-facing teams to deliver world-class SaaS experiences at scale.

The central mandate is operational improvement through innovation — designing and delivering automation and AI-driven services that reduce manual effort, accelerate provisioning and deployment, improve quality, and drive margin improvement across the SaaS fleet. This leader must be able to evaluate, adopt, integrate, and execute with the right mix of build/buy, and partner to deliver outcomes.

This role also serves as the Product and SaaS Security Officer (PSSO), providing security governance, risk oversight, and compliance accountability across CORE’s cloud operations (~20% of scope). The PSSO responsibility requires visibility across the full engineering and operations landscape and the judgment to enforce security standards when they are at risk.

Key Responsibilities

• Engineering Foundations & Operational Enablement
• Lead a globally distributed engineering organization spanning platform engineering, process engineering, product onboarding, AI engineering, automation, sovereign cloud engineering, and tool configuration/integrations
• Deliver the engineering foundations — tooling, automation, platform capabilities, and AI Ops services — that enable CORE’s operations, SRE, and customer delivery teams to operate at scale
• Drive continuous operational improvement through innovative use of automation and AI — reducing manual effort, accelerating time-to-value for customers, and improving the reliability and efficiency of SaaS operations
• Lead platform engineering across multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure), including infrastructure-as-code, container orchestration (Kubernetes), CI/CD pipeline architecture, and cloud-native platform capabilities
• Own the product onboarding engineering process — ensuring new products and releases from multiple product segments are production-ready, with ops readiness checklists, release verification, and customer journey testing
• Lead containerization and modernization efforts across the SaaS fleet, including migration of process-based deployments to containerized architectures
• Manage engineering budgets, vendor relationships (including cloud service providers), and technology selection decisions — balancing build vs. buy vs. partner to deliver outcomes efficiently
• AI Ops & Automation
• Design and deliver impactful AI Ops services that transform how CORE operates — including digital agents for operational workflows, AI-assisted knowledge management, intelligent runbook automation, and predictive operations capabilities
• Drive a unified AI Ops strategy that consolidates fragmented point tools into a coherent framework, delivering measurable efficiency gains and enabling operations teams to scale without proportional headcount growth
• Evaluate and adopt emerging AI capabilities (agentic AI, LLM-based operations tools, automated diagnostics) with a focus on practical impact — moving from proof-of-concept to production-grade operational services
• Establish an automation-first culture within engineering — systematically identifying manual processes across the SaaS operations lifecycle and delivering automation that reduces toil, improves consistency, and frees teams to focus on higher-value work
• Product & Solution Security Officer (PSSO)
  • Serve as the security governance authority for CORE’s SaaS and cloud operations — with the backbone, visibility, and mandate to enforce standards when security is at risk
  • Own security policy, standards, and compliance across the CORE production environment, including SOC 2, ISO 27001, and regulated/sovereign deployment requirements
  • Drive vulnerability management, cloud account hardening, and security incident response in partnership with the enterprise cybersecurity organization
  • Oversee certifications lifecycle and audit readiness across SaaS, managed services, and specialized customer-facing environments
  • Govern security engineering practices including vulnerability remediation, IAM compliance, encryption standards, and cross-tenant isolation
• Cross-Functional Execution in a Matrixed Environment
  • Work across multiple product segments — not just a single product line — to ensure engineering foundations support the full breadth of CORE’s SaaS portfolio and the diverse requirements of each segment’s cloud journey
  • Influence and drive to conclusion programs that span participation of multiple organizations — product segments, cloud platform providers, enterprise IT, cybersecurity, and commercial teams — without direct authority over all participants
  • Partner with Operations leadership to bridge the engineering-to-operations gap, ensuring engineering delivers in formats operations can support and maintains shared accountability for customer outcomes
  • Collaborate with Commercials on infrastructure cost modeling, container pricing, and FinOps governance to support SaaS margin improvement
  • Work with Systems Architecture on infrastructure evolution, performance optimization, and cloud provider technology decisions
  • Represent CORE engineering in enterprise-wide initiatives, positioning CORE as a consumer and contributor to enterprise engineering standards
• Desired Attributes
  • Experience with Siemens SaaS product portfolio and associated build and release processes
  • Execution mentality — focused on delivering outcomes, not just designs. Able to move from strategy to implementation to measurable results, and to drive teams to do the same
  • Innovative thinker who challenges conventional approaches to operational problems — bringing fresh ideas about how AI, automation, and modern engineering practices can fundamentally improve how a SaaS organization operates
  • Comfortable operating in a matrix environment with significant dependencies on organizations outside direct control — and skilled at influencing those organizations toward shared outcomes
  • Strong communicator who can translate complex technical capabilities into business impact for executive leadership
  • Judgment to know when to build, when to buy, and when to partner — and the ability to execute effectively in all three modes
  • Executive presence to enforce security and quality standards when they are at risk
  • Travel
    • Required amount of travel with the position is up to 20%, including international travel to global delivery centers (India, Mexico, Poland, Malaysia) and customer sites

Qualifications

• Education
  • Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Information Technology, or related field
  • Master's degree or MBA preferred
• Required Leadership Experience
  • 12+ years of progressive experience in software engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, or cloud infrastructure — with at least 5 years in a senior leadership role managing multi-functional engineering teams
  • Demonstrated experience leading engineering organizations of 50+ people across globally distributed teams, including offshore/nearshore delivery centers
  • Track record of leading engineering functions within SaaS or cloud operations organizations at enterprise scale (hundreds of customers, multi-cloud, multi-product)
  • Experience managing engineering through organizational transformation, including team integration, capability consolidation, and culture-building across previously separate teams
  • Proven ability to influence and drive cross-organizational programs to conclusion in a matrixed enterprise environment — delivering results through alignment and influence, not just direct authority
• Required Technical Depth
  • Deep understanding of cloud-native architectures across AWS and Azure, including Kubernetes orchestration, container-based deployment models, infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, Ansible), and CI/CD pipeline design at scale
  • Strong background in SaaS operations engineering — including change management, release governance, production readiness, and incident management frameworks (ITIL/ITSM)
  • Demonstrated experience designing and delivering AI Ops or intelligent automation services that produced measurable operational impact — not just prototypes, but production-grade capabilities that changed how an operations organization works
  • Working knowledge of security and compliance frameworks (SOC 2, ISO 27001, NIST) and experience driving vulnerability management, IAM, and audit programs
  • Familiarity with observability and SRE practices — including monitoring, incident response, SLA/SLO management, and blameless post-incident review
  • Experience with enterprise ITSM platforms (ServiceNow), ticketing ecosystems, and change control workflow
• Required Work Experience
  • Track record of delivering engineering capabilities that measurably improved the speed, efficiency, and quality of SaaS operations — automation, tooling, and AI-driven services that transformed operational outcomes, not just technical architecture
  • Demonstrated ability to evaluate and execute with the right mix of build, buy, and partner — not defaulting to building everything, but ensuring the organization can execute effectively regardless of approach
  • Experience establishing and maintaining engineering standards across a complex ecosystem of dependencies — including multiple product development teams, cloud platform providers, and enterprise IT organizations
  • Track record of improving SaaS margins through engineering efficiency, automation, and cost optimization
  • Experience working across multiple product lines or business units in a matrixed enterprise software environment
• Desired Attributes