Director of Cloud Operations

Springbrook Software; United States; On-site; USD 180,000 - 240,000; Full time

Job summary

Springbrook Software is seeking a Director of Cloud Operations to guide the cloud-native Cirrus platform for 3,000+ agencies. You will own the cloud strategy, reliability, and cost efficiency, building a high-impact team of engineers across SRE, platform and DevSecOps disciplines.

You will define SLIs/SLOs, drive automation, and partner with security and product leadership to embed reliability requirements. This is a remote leadership role.

Qualifications

• Degree or equivalent practical experience in a related field.
• At least 10 years supporting cloud-native apps and infra.
• Minimum 3 years directly managing and developing a team of engineers.
• Proven cloud operations leadership for multi-tenant SaaS.
• Strong Azure experience guiding IaaS, PaaS and container-based services.
• Deep IaC, GitOps and CI/CD expertise.
• Experience with PCI DSS, SOC 2 or NIST compliance.
• FinOps, cloud cost management, capacity planning.
• Ability to attract, retain, and develop engineering talent.
• Excellent communication with executive leadership and customers.

Responsibilities

• Lead, grow, and develop the Cloud Operations team including hiring and coaching.
• Own the cloud strategy, multi-year roadmap, and platform reliability.
• Define SLIs/SLOs and report results to executives.
• Establish standards for IaC, containers, CI/CD, observability, change management.
• Promote DevSecOps and zero-trust in the SDLC.
• Oversee end-to-end incident management and blameless postmortems.
• Set automation and self-service platform strategy with AI/AIops focus.
• Own FinOps, cloud cost management, and budget for Azure and other clouds.
• Define release engineering and GitOps deployment practices.
• Support compliance programs and audit evidence collection.
• Translate technical risk and cloud spend into business terms.
• Prioritize work across competing demands and timelines.
• Be a leadership escalation point for major outages and security incidents.
• Foster documentation, repeatable processes, and platform thinking.
• Maintain awareness of Springbrook security and privacy policies.

Skills

Team leadership

Cloud operations strategy

Cross-functional collaboration

Communication to execs

Problem solving

Automation mindset

On-call leadership

Analytics & metrics

Education

Bachelor's degree in CS or related field

Equivalent practical experience

Tools

Terraform

Kubernetes

Azure DevOps / GitHub Actions

Azure cloud services

OpenTelemetry / Application Insights / Log Analytics

Entra ID / zero-trust

Job description

Springbrook Software is the cloud finance and ERP platform trusted by 3,000+ local government agencies across the United States. Our Cirrus platform delivers modern, multi-tenant SaaS solutions spanning finance, payroll, HR, utility billing, property tax, budgeting, permitting, and payments, helping communities deliver the responsive, secure, and transparent services citizens expect. We have been named to the GovTech Top 100 for six consecutive years, and backed by Five Arrows and Accel-KKR, we are aggressively expanding the Cirrus platform and investing deeply in AI and cloud-native technology to define the next generation of government technology.

Where you fit:

Springbrook is looking for a Director of Cloud Operations to lead its Cloud Operations team. Cloud Operations brings together site reliability engineering, platform engineering, and FinOps disciplines to keep a modern, cloud-native SaaS platform secure, available, performant, and cost-efficient. Our mission is to protect and continuously improve the software and systems of Springbrook, with an emphasis on security, availability, performance, scalability, and cost efficiency - DevOps and platform engineering with a software engineering mindset.

In this role you will lead, grow, and develop the team of Cloud Operations engineers accountable for keeping the Cirrus platform available, secure, performant, and cost-efficient for 3,000+ government agencies. You will own the cloud and reliability strategy and roadmap, set the engineering standards and service level objectives the team operates against, mature our incident management, platform engineering, and automation programs, and represent the operational and cost posture of the platform to executive leadership and customers. This is a leadership position for someone who has come up through deep technical cloud infrastructure work and now wants to scale their impact through a team.

This position is 100% remote.

RESPONSIBILITIES:

• Lead, grow, and develop a team of Cloud Operations engineers, including hiring, onboarding, coaching, goal setting, performance management, and career development
• Own the technical vision, strategy, and multi-year roadmap for the availability, scalability, performance, security, and cost efficiency of Springbrook's cloud platform and systems
• Define and own service level objectives, service level indicators, and error budgets for customer-facing services; hold the organization accountable to them and report results to executive leadership
• Establish the standards, architectures, guidelines, and review practices the team applies to infrastructure as code, containerization and orchestration, CI/CD, observability, and change management, and ensure they are adopted consistently across the platform
• Champion a DevSecOps and zero-trust approach, partnering with Security and Product Development leadership to embed reliability and security requirements into the software development lifecycle
• Own the incident management program end to end, including on-call structure, escalation paths, severity definitions, customer communication, and blameless postmortems; drive systemic remediation so issues do not recur
• Set the automation and self-service platform strategy that reduces operational toil and manual load, with measurable targets for coverage and progress, including the use of AI-assisted and AIOps tooling where it improves reliability or speed
• Own capacity planning, demand forecasting, and FinOps practices - cloud cost management, optimization, and chargeback - for the Azure (and any additional cloud) footprint; manage the team's budget, tooling investments, and vendor relationships
• Define release engineering and GitOps-based deployment practices that increase deployment frequency and speed while lowering change failure rate
• Own the Cloud Operations contribution to compliance programs (PCI, SOC 2, NIST, etc.), including control design, evidence collection, and audit support
• Identify, implement, and report the KPIs and operational metrics that measure the success of our services, and translate technical risk and cloud spend into business terms for executive and customer audiences
• Prioritize and manage the team's work across competing demands, adhering to critical project timelines in a fast-paced environment
• Serve as a leadership escalation point for major service interruptions and security incidents, and participate in a leadership on-call rotation
• Build a team culture of meticulous documentation, repeatable process design, platform thinking, and continuous improvement
• Maintain general awareness of Springbrook security and privacy policies
• Report any security incident or suspected security incident to the Springbrook Incident Response Team

Required Qualifications:

• A degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field; or equivalent practical experience
• A minimum of ten years' experience supporting cloud-native applications and infrastructure, including at least three years directly managing and developing a team of engineers
• A proven track record leading cloud operations, site reliability engineering, or platform engineering for a multi-tenant SaaS platform, with personal accountability for uptime, availability, and cost commitments
• A thorough working knowledge of Azure (or an equivalent major cloud provider), sufficient to guide and review the design, deployment, and management of IaaS, PaaS, and container-based (Kubernetes or equivalent) services, including their security and compliance capabilities
• Sufficient depth in infrastructure as code (Terraform or equivalent), GitOps and CI/CD pipelines (Azure DevOps, GitHub Actions, or similar), and modern observability platforms (e.g., Azure Monitor, OpenTelemetry, Log Analytics, Application Insights, or equivalent) to set standards and evaluate the technical decisions of the team
• Demonstrated experience defining service level objectives and error budgets, and running a formal incident management and postmortem program
• Experience operating containerized and traditional Windows/Linux server environments at scale, with a solid grasp of modern IT operations practices, network design, and identity management (Entra ID or equivalent, including zero-trust principles)
• Experience supporting compliance and audit frameworks such as PCI DSS, SOC 2, or NIST
• Experience with FinOps practices, cloud cost management, capacity and demand planning, and ownership of a team budget
• Ability to attract, retain, and develop engineering talent, and to build an on-call culture that is sustainable for the team
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills, including the ability to present clearly to executive leadership and customers
• Strong analytical, prioritization, and problem-solving skills, with attention to detail and a bias toward repeatable, automated process
• An effective cross-functional collaborator who can lead through influence as well as direct authority
• Maintain general awareness of Springbrook security and privacy policies
• Report any security incident or suspected security incident to the Springbrook Incident Response Team

Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience in government technology, public sector, or another highly regulated industry
• Experience scaling a cloud operations or SRE function from a small team into a mature, platform-oriented practice
• Experience leading distributed, remote, or offshore engineering teams
• Familiarity with PCI DSS requirements
• Familiarity with ITSM and ITIL service management practices
• Familiarity with FinOps Foundation practices and cost optimization tooling (e.g., Azure Cost Management, CloudHealth, or similar)

Applicants must have the unrestricted ability to work in the United States (sponsorship will not be offered).

Springbrook Software is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Springbrook does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, non-disqualifying physical or mental disability, national origin, veteran status or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, and business need.