Senior Director, Cloud Operations

Foundant + smartsimple; United States; Remote; USD 180,000 - 260,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Tuition reimbursement

Lifestyle reimbursements

Mindfulness & fitness initiatives

Flexible PTO

Internal mobility opportunities

Employee recognition

Job summary

Foundant + smartsimple seeks a senior leader to own cloud operations for multiple SaaS products. You’ll drive availability, performance, and reliability, managing incidents end-to-end and coordinating RCAs with stakeholders

You will lead a small team of admins/SREs, oversee IaC/CI-CD and traditional release environments, and optimize costs across a multi-region footprint (US, Canada, EU, UK, Australia). Eligibility to work in the United States is required.

Qualifications

• 10+ years of cloud operations or infrastructure leadership experience with 5+ years in a director role.
• Hands-on multi-cloud ops in AWS and Azure.
• Experience delivering SaaS across multiple regions with data residency awareness.
• Proven incident management and root cause analysis leadership.
• Experience with IaC/CI-CD and traditional release environments.
• Cost forecasting and scalable cloud hosting cost management.
• Experience building and developing system admins and SRE teams.
• U.S. work eligibility required.

Responsibilities

• You’ll own end-to-end cloud operations across Foundant’s SaaS products, ensuring availability, performance, and reliability.
• You’ll lead availability incident management for production environments, driving triage, RCAs, and stakeholder communications.
• You’ll oversee configuration and change management across automated and traditional release cycles.
• You’ll manage hosting costs across US, Canada, EU, Australia, and UK.
• You’ll build and lead a small team of system admins and SREs.
• You’ll partner with Development, Technical Security, and Support for clear handoffs.
• You’ll establish and improve monitoring, alerting, and performance management.

Skills

Cloud operations

Multi-cloud (AWS & Azure)

Incident management

Cost optimization

Team leadership

SRE

CI/CD

Data residency knowledge

Decision making under pressure

Education

Bachelor's degree in Computer Science or related

Job description

_ What You’ll Do: _

• You’ll own end-to-end cloud operations across Foundant’s portfolio ofSaaS products,ensuring theavailability, performance, and reliability that our clients depend on.

• You’ll lead availability incident management for production environments — driving triage and resolution and running root cause analysis — and serve as the primary voice presenting incident readouts and RCAs tointernal and externalstakeholders.

• You’ll oversee configuration and change management practices across environments that range from fully automated, developer-ownedCI/CD pipelines to more traditional, manually managed infrastructure and packaged release cycles.

• You’ll manage infrastructure hosting costs across our multi-region footprint (US, Canada, EU, Australia, and UK), balancing performance, regional compliance needs, and efficient use of our infrastructure spend.

• You’ll build and lead a small team of system administrators and SREs, coaching them toward technical excellence and shared accountability for operationaloutcomes.

• You’ll partner closely with peers in Development, Technical Security, and Support to keep operational readiness, incident response, and handoffs clear and well-coordinated across teams.

• You’ll establish and continuously improve monitoring, alerting, and performance management practices.

• Other duties as assigned.

_ What You’ll Need: _

• 10+ years of progressive experience in cloud operations or infrastructure leadership, including 5+ years in a director-level role.

• Deep, hands-on expertise operating and troubleshooting multi-cloud environments (AWSandAzure).

• Experience managing availability and performance for SaaS products deployed across multiple geographic regions, along with working knowledge of regional data residency and compliance considerations (e.g., US, Canada, EU, UK, Australia).

• Experience leading availability incident management and root cause analysis for production environments (distinct from security incident response).

• Experience overseeing configuration and change management across both infrastructure-as-code/CI-CD environments and traditional, manually managed release environments.

• Experience managing cloud infrastructure hosting costs at scale, including forecasting and cost-optimization practices.

• Experience building, managing, and developing teams of system administrators and/or Site Reliability Engineers.

• Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, or a related field preferred.

• Must be legally eligible to work in the United States.

_ What You’ll Bring to our Team Dynamics: _

Strategic Thinking

You’ll translate Foundant’s North Star into a clear cloud operations strategy — allocating your team’s time and attention across five products with different operatingmodels, andmaking the call on where to invest for the most impact.

Performance Advancement

You’ll set and hold a high bar for availability and performance across the portfolio, using data and monitoring to catch underperformance early and drive continuous improvement rather than waiting for the next incident to force the issue.

Decision-Making

You’ll make timely, well-reasoned calls during live availability incidents, weighing evidence and impact under pressure, and you’ll stand behind those decisions when explaining root cause to the broader company.

Collaboration and Learning

You’ll build genuine working relationships with your peers in Development, Technical Security, and Support, because operational reliability only works when ownership across teams is clear and trusted.

Change Management

You’ll communicate incident root causes and operational changes with clarity and candor, helping the rest of the company understand what happened, what’s changing, and why — even when the news isn’t easy.

Staff Development

You’ll coach your system administrators and SREs with direct, honest feedback, growing their technical depth and giving them room to take ownership of the systems they run.

_ Why You’ll Love Working at Foundant: _

• At the heart of everything we do is a commitment to innovation and making a positive impact. Whether you’re working on projects that empower not-for-profits, community foundations, or corporations, your contributions will help drive real-world change.
• We offer competitive salary and benefits, including tuition, and lifestyle reimbursements, and bespoke mindfulness and fitness initiatives.
• With our Flexible PTO policy, you’ll have the freedom to manage your time in a way that supports your personal well-being and professional success.
• We’re committed to your professional and personal development. With our merger, you’ll have the chance to collaborate across teams, giving you exposure to diverse ideas, expertise, and projects that span multiple industries.
• As part of a larger organization, you’ll have even more opportunities to grow your career. Whether it’s exploring new roles, leadership opportunities, or shifting to a different department, we support internal mobility to help you achieve your career goals
• You’ll enjoy autonomy and responsibility, empowering you to approach your work creatively and independently, fostering innovation and independent thought.
• Employee recognition is a core part of our culture. When you do a great job, we make sure everyone knows about it!

Foundant is an equal opportunity employer, committed to building a diverse workforce that represents the communities we serve. We welcome and encourage applications from all qualified candidates, and will consider all applicants without regard to race, color, citizenship, religion, sex, marital/family status, sexual orientation, gender identity, Indigenous status, age, disability, or individuals who may require accommodation.

Foundant is also committed to providing accommodations throughout the interview and employment process. Accommodations are available upon request for candidates participating in all aspects of the selection process. If you have accessibility requirements during the recruitment process and require accommodation, please contact [e-mail].