Senior Manager, Infrastructure Operations and Compliance

Cloudflare; Denver (CO); On-site; USD 156,000 - 215,000; Full time

Benefits offered by this job

Health benefits

401(k) plan

Employee stock participation

Flexible PTO

Parental leave

Job summary

Cloudflare is seeking an experienced Senior Manager to lead a unified Infrastructure Operations function spanning 750+ data center sites in 125+ countries. You’ll drive 24x7 operational availability, manage two teams, and own the end-to-end decommissioning lifecycle with audit-ready documentation.

You will balance speed and rigor across global operations, partner with GRC and auditors, and push for automation to scale Cloudflare’s footprint while maintaining high standards.

Qualifications

• 7+ years in infrastructure operations, data center ops, or related field with at least 3 years in people management
• Demonstrated experience managing managers and multiple teams to operational SLAs
• Direct experience with physical data center operations including hardware lifecycle and decommissioning
• Familiarity with SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP or equivalent compliance in an operational capacity
• Strong program management instincts and ability to run complex multi-workstream initiatives

Responsibilities

• Lead two teams: Operations and Security & Compliance.
• Own end-to-end decommissioning lifecycle with auditable pipeline and evidence filing.
• Maintain 24x7 incident response across Cloudflare locations and coordinate with vendors.
• Own quarterly/monthly access reviews and audit readiness across frameworks.
• Drive automation and internal tooling to reduce manual operational burden.

Skills

Leadership

Infrastructure ops

People mgmt

Compliance awareness

Tools

Jira

Netbox

Confluence

PagerDuty

Job description

About Us

At Cloudflare, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks that powers millions of websites and other Internet properties for customers ranging from individual bloggers to SMBs to Fortune 500 companies. Cloudflare protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare all have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.

About Us

At Cloudflare, we are on a mission to help build a better Internet. Today the company runs one of the world’s largest networks that powers millions of websites and other Internet properties for customers ranging from individual bloggers to SMBs to Fortune 500 companies. Cloudflare protects and accelerates any Internet application online without adding hardware, installing software, or changing a line of code. Internet properties powered by Cloudflare all have web traffic routed through its intelligent global network, which gets smarter with every request. As a result, they see significant improvement in performance and a decrease in spam and other attacks. Cloudflare was named to Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top Company Cultures list and ranked among the World’s Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company.

Available Locations

• Austin
• Seattle
• Denver
• Atlanta
• Washington DC
• Application Deadline: December 16, 2026

Position Overview

Cloudflare is looking for a Senior Manager to lead a unified Infrastructure Operations function spanning physical network reliability, operational security, and global regulatory compliance across 750+ data center sites in 125+ countries. The leader in this role ensures 24x7 operational availability of Cloudflare's network infrastructure through incident response, hardware break-fix, circuit management, and physical hardware lifecycle operations. This leader also owns physical access control policy and administration, periodic access reviews, and evidence-based compliance delivery across SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, ISMAP, and IRAP.

You will lead two teams, setting organizational direction, building talent, and being accountable for outcomes across the full lifecycle of Cloudflare's physical infrastructure: from how hardware is deployed and maintained, to how access is controlled and reviewed, to how assets are securely retired and evidenced for audit. The breadth of this scope demands a leader who can hold the org-level tensions, speed versus rigor, global scale versus precise detail, partner dependency versus uncompromising standards, without losing either end.

You will bring credibility across both dimensions of this role. On the infrastructure side, a strong grasp of data center colocation environments, network architecture, and hardware operations as well as the judgment to lead managers and teams who live in that world every day. On the compliance side, the organizational instinct to maintain audit readiness continuously, not just at cycle time, and the stakeholder fluency to navigate relationships with GRC, government auditors, and strategic global partners. Above all, you will bring a bias toward building smarter processes, better tooling, and AI-assisted operations that multiply your team's capacity as Cloudflare's footprint continues to grow.

What You'll Do

Team Leadership

• Lead two teams, the Operations team and the Security and Compliance team.
• Set goals, develop talent, and build a culture of operational excellence and compliance-consciousness across both functions
• Hold both teams to shared SLAs and quality standards, balancing the urgency of 24x7 incident response with the rigor of compliance audit cycles
• Serve as the escalation point for cross-team issues, complex vendor negotiations, and decisions that touch both operational and regulatory domains

Unified Decommissioning Lifecycle

• Own the end-to-end DECOM process as a single, governed workflow: physical collections and unracking, secure asset destruction with CoD issuance (ITAD vendor management), serial number verification, compliance evidence filing, and records closure
• Eliminate the current handoff gap between Maintain's physical operations and DCSC's compliance oversight building a single, auditable pipeline from "decom triggered" to "evidence archived".
• Drive ITAD vendor relationships, escalation paths, and contractual SLAs for asset destruction across all regions (APAC, EMEA, NASA, South America)
• Maintain audit-readiness of decommissioning records for SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and FedRAMP control requirements

Maintain Team Operational Accountability

• Accountable for 24x7 incident response coverage across all Cloudflare locations: carrier outages, DC facility issues, hardware degradation, and power/temperature events.
• Oversee hardware break-fix operations including coordination with Metro Technicians, third-party repair vendors and remote contractors.
• Drive maturity in circuit decommissioning, RMA management, and physical collections processes
• Ensure on-call schedules, handover protocols, and incident SLAs are consistently met across APAC, EMEA, and NASA shifts.

DCSC Compliance & Access Control Accountability

• Accountable for quarterly and monthly access review cycles (QAR/MAR) across 750+ global data center sites covering SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, FedRAMP Moderate/High, ISMAP, and IRAP frameworks
• Own the physical access provisioning and deprovisioning function, including SLA adherence and ACL integrity
• Serve as the senior owner of the team’s automation initiatives
• Maintain executive-level relationships with GRC leads across all active compliance frameworks; be the accountable voice for DCSC's control obligations in audit conversations
• Represent DCSC at Monthly Business Reviews and executive infrastructure health checks

Automation & Operational Efficiency

• Drive a meaningful reduction in manual operational burden across both teams identifying and prioritizing automation opportunities in access reviews, decommissioning evidence collection, portal data extraction, and incident triage
• Sponsor and guide the development of internal tooling (DCSC Portal, automation scripts, AI-assisted workflows) that multiplies team capacity without proportional headcount growth
• Evaluate and adopt AI tooling for repetitive operational tasks, documentation acceleration, root-cause analysis, and compliance evidence generation.

Who You Are

An experienced infrastructure operations leader. You have managed engineering teams responsible for large-scale, globally distributed physical or network infrastructure. You know how to hold a team accountable to 24x7 operational standards while also driving longer-horizon strategic work. You don't lose sight of the incident queue while building the roadmap.

Comfortable at the compliance/operations intersection. You don't need to be a GRC expert, but you understand why physical access controls matter for SOC 2 and FedRAMP, why the decommissioning chain of custody is an audit control, and why a missed quarterly access review has real consequences. You approach compliance not as overhead but as a non-negotiable quality dimension of operational work.

You ensure the teams you're inheriting are operationally capable but structurally manual. You see automation as a force multiplier and have a track record of reducing operational toil through process design, tooling investment, and thoughtful prioritization, not just through headcount.

A strong people leader with a coaching instinct. You manage managers. You know how to develop them, set clear expectations, give direct feedback, and create the conditions for high-performing teams. You build trust across functions and are comfortable representing your organization at the executive level.

Energized by global complexity. Your teams operate across APAC, EMEA, and NASA time zones, spanning hundreds of vendors, data center providers, and regulatory jurisdictions. You thrive in this environment rather than being overwhelmed by it.

Required Experience

• 7+ years in infrastructure operations, data center operations, network operations, or a closely related field, with at least 3 years in a people management role
• Demonstrated experience managing managers and holding multiple teams accountable to operational SLAs simultaneously
• Direct experience with physical data center operations including hardware lifecycle management, decommissioning, colocation vendor management, or break-fix operations
• Familiarity with compliance frameworks relevant to physical infrastructure: SOC 2, ISO 27001, FedRAMP, or equivalent — at an operational (not auditor) level
• Strong program management instincts: comfortable running complex, multi-workstream initiatives with dependencies across teams, vendors, and time zones
• Proven track record of driving operational efficiency through process redesign or automation adoption
• Excellent written and verbal communication; able to translate technical operational details into executive-level reporting and vice versa

Preferred Qualifications

• Experience managing 24x7 on-call operations teams, including PagerDuty or equivalent tooling and incident escalation frameworks
• Familiarity with network infrastructure concepts (circuit management, cross-connect decommissioning, network operations)
• Experience with physical access control systems, access control list management, or vendor portal administration at scale
• Knowledge of ITAD (IT Asset Disposition) vendor management and compliance requirements for secure destruction
• Background in a rapidly scaling, global infrastructure environment (hyperscaler, cloud provider, major CDN, or similar)
• Experience driving SSO or identity federation projects across large third-party vendor ecosystems
• Familiarity with Jira-based operational workflows, Netbox or similar DCIM tools, and Confluence-based documentation practices

Reporting Structure

This role reports to the Director, Infrastructure Operations (AMER) and is part of the broader Infrastructure Operations leadership team.

Compensation

• Compensation may be adjusted depending on work location.
• For Colorado based hires: Estimated annual salary of $156,000 - $215,000.
• Washington (Kirkland), and Washington D.C. based hires: Estimated annual salary of $182,000 - $251,000.

Equity

• This role is eligible to participate in Cloudflare's equity plan.

Benefits

• Cloudflare offers a complete package of benefits and programs to support you and your family. Our benefits programs can help you pay health care expenses, support caregiving, build capital for the future and make life a little easier and fun! The below is a description of our benefits for employees in the United States, and benefits may vary for employees based outside the U.S.
• Health & Welfare Benefits
  • Medical/Rx Insurance
  • Dental Insurance
  • Vision Insurance
  • Flexible Spending Accounts
  • Commuter Spending Accounts
  • Fertility & Family Forming Benefits
  • On-demand mental health support and Employee Assistance Program
  • Global Travel Medical Insurance
• Financial Benefits
  • Short and Long Term Disability Insurance
  • Life & Accident Insurance
  • 401(k) Retirement Savings Plan
  • Employee Stock Participation Plan
• Time Off
  • Flexible paid time off covering vacation and sick leave
  • Leave programs, including parental, pregnancy health, medical, and bereavement leave

What Makes Cloudflare Special?

We’re not just a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company. We’re a highly ambitious, large-scale technology company with a soul. Fundamental to our mission to help build a better Internet is protecting the free and open Internet.

Project Galileo

Since 2014, we've equipped more than 2,400 journalism and civil society organizations in 111 countries with powerful tools to defend themselves against attacks that would otherwise censor their work, technology already used by Cloudflare’s enterprise customers--at no cost.

Athenian Project

In 2017, we created the Athenian Project to ensure that state and local governments have the highest level of protection and reliability for free, so that their constituents have access to election information and voter registration. Since the project, we've provided services to more than 425 local government election websites in 33 states.

1.1.1.1

We released 1.1.1.1 to help fix the foundation of the Internet by building a faster, more secure and privacy-centric public DNS resolver. This is available publicly for everyone to use - it is the first consumer-focused service Cloudflare has ever released. Here’s the deal - we don’t store client IP addresses never, ever. We will continue to abide by our privacy commitment and ensure that no user data is sold to advertisers or used to target consumers.

Please note that applicants who progress to the offer stage of the interview process may be asked to attend an in-person interview within one of the Cloudflare Offices or Cloudflare Hubs. More details about this will be available at that stage of the interview process.

This position may require access to information protected under U.S. export control laws, including the U.S. Export Administration Regulations. Please note that any offer of employment may be conditioned on your authorization to receive software or technology controlled under these U.S. export laws without sponsorship for an export license.

Cloudflare is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to providing equal employment opportunity for all people and place great value in both diversity and inclusiveness. All qualified applicants will be considered for employment without regard to their, or any other person's, perceived or actual race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, national origin, ancestry, citizenship, age, physical or mental disability, medical condition, family care status, or any other basis protected by law. We are an AA/Veterans/Disabled Employer.

Cloudflare provides reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. Please tell us if you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job. Examples of reasonable accommodations include, but are not limited to, changing the application process, providing documents in an alternate format, using a sign language interpreter, or using specialized equipment. If you require a reasonable accommodation to apply for a job, please contact us via e-mail at [e-mail] or via mail at 101 Townsend St. San Francisco, CA 94107.