Chief of Staff, SVP Cloud Infrastructure

Workday•Pleasanton, CA

2d•Hybrid

About The Position

This leadership role is a critical partner to the SVP, Infrastructure and Production Engineering (IPE). You will act as the Chief of Staff, driving the operational cadence, strategic execution, and cross-functional alignment of the IPE organization. You will ensure the organization runs efficiently, that investments in cloud infrastructure and operations are well-governed, and that the SVP’s time is focused on the highest-impact priorities across reliability, cost, and scale. You bring a strong understanding of cloud infrastructure concepts and experience with FinOps or cloud cost optimization, enabling you to connect business strategy with technical and financial realities.

Requirements

7–10+ years of progressive experience in strategic operations, business/technical program management, management consulting, business strategy, or an executive Chief of Staff role, preferably within a large-scale SaaS or cloud-focused Product & Technology organization.
1–3+ years in a senior leadership or executive-facing role, reporting to a C-level executive, GM/President, or SVP-level technology leader.
Experience working closely with infrastructure, platform, SRE, or cloud operations teams, with familiarity across concepts like public cloud platforms, networking, storage, compute, observability, and incident management.
Experience with FinOps or cloud cost management, including partnering with Finance and Engineering to understand cloud spend, drive efficiency, and implement governance mechanisms and KPIs.
Strategic and Technical Acumen: Ability to quickly understand cloud infrastructure and platform topics and connect them to business, financial, and customer outcomes. Demonstrated ability to conduct independent research and complex analysis, synthesizing technical, operational, and financial data into clear, actionable recommendations for senior executives.
Operational Discipline and Governance: Proven experience designing and implementing a Rhythm of Business (ROB) or governance model for a large technology organization, including managing executive meetings, planning cycles, operational reviews, and cloud cost/FinOps forums.
FinOps and Data-Driven Decision Making: Comfortable working with cloud usage, cost, and performance data. Able to partner with Finance, Security, and P&T to define metrics, dashboards, and policies that improve cost efficiency while maintaining performance and reliability.
Executive Communication: Exceptional written and verbal communication skills with the ability to create high-quality, audience-specific materials (e.g., executive updates, Board content, infrastructure roadmaps, cloud cost reviews, organizational narratives). Able to translate complex technical and financial concepts into clear, concise stories for non-technical audiences.
Program Leadership and Cross-Functional Influence: Expert ability to own and incubate large, ambiguous, cross-functional initiatives from concept through execution and hand-off. Demonstrated success driving alignment across engineering, product, finance, and other stakeholders, influencing leaders without formal authority, and sustaining momentum over time.
Executive Triage and Prioritization: Proven ability to manage a high volume of inbound requests, prioritize on behalf of an executive while maintaining strong relationships and trust.
Behavioral Characteristics Trust and Confidentiality: Impeccable professional judgment and the ability to handle highly sensitive, confidential, and strategic information with discretion and maturity.
Resilience and Agility: Capable of thriving in a fast-paced, demanding environment. Able to move fluidly between strategic thought and tactical execution, and between technical and business discussions.
Servant Leadership and Collaboration: A collaborative, humble leader who acts as a force-multiplier for the SVP and the broader P&T organization. Consistently centers the success of the team and business over personal visibility, and brings people together across functions to solve complex problems.

Responsibilities

Operational Cadence and Execution Design and Run the Cloud Infrastructure Rhythm of Business: Shape and manage IPE’s operating rhythm. This includes staff meetings, business and operational reviews, cloud cost and capacity reviews, and leadership offsites focused on reliability, efficiency, and scale.
Drive Accountability on Cloud and Operational Outcomes: Institute and manage a clear follow-up process for all decisions and action items, ensuring timely execution by the SVP’s leadership team. Maintain high standards of accountability around availability, performance, capacity, security posture, and cloud cost targets.
Track, Analyze, and Communicate Progress: Develop and maintain simple, clear dashboards and narratives to track key initiatives, service-level health, cloud usage and spend, and organizational health. Synthesize insights and highlight risks, trade-offs, and recommendations for the SVP, with a particular focus on reliability, efficiency, and FinOps metrics.
Lead Internal Communications: Orchestrate IPE’s internal communications strategy. This includes all-hands meetings, internal announcements, and leadership messages that explain priorities such as modernization efforts, infrastructure roadmap, cloud migrations, resilience work, and cost-optimization programs. Ensure a clear and consistent narrative that connects infrastructure strategy to business and product outcomes.
Align Key Partners Across Functions: Act as the primary operational point of contact for the SVP. Build strong alignment with leaders and Chiefs of Staff across Product & Technology (P&T), Finance, Security, GTM, and other key partners.
Executive Partnership Optimize Executive Focus: Partner closely with the SVP’s Executive Assistant to strategically manage the SVP’s calendar and priorities. Ensure time is allocated to the most critical activities across strategic planning, operational reviews, customer and partner engagements, and cross-functional forums.
Serve as Proxy and Filter: Act as the first point of contact for inbound requests. Triage, resolve, or delegate as needed to protect the SVP’s focus. Assess which topics require deep executive involvement versus where you or others can drive forward decisions, particularly in areas of cloud investments, vendor decisions, or cross-team escalations.
Ensure Meeting Readiness and Follow-Through: Prepare the SVP for all key meetings (customer, internal, strategic, and external partner). Define clear agendas, compile pre-read materials, and ensure the right data is available. Own all follow-up actions and ensure outcomes are clearly documented, communicated, and driven to completion.
Represent the SVP, IPE: When needed, attend key meetings on brehalf of the SVP, synthesizing information, communicating decisions, and driving progress. This may include internal steering committees, FinOps forums, cross-functional incident or reliability reviews, and vendor/partner discussions.
Strategic Planning and Cross-Functional Initiatives Lead Strategic Analysis and Business Cases: Conduct focused research and analysis to support executive decision-making. This may include evaluating new cloud technologies or patterns, cloud vendor and tooling strategies, capacity planning approaches, build vs. buy decisions, and the financial impact of major infrastructure investments. Translate technical and financial data into clear recommendations.
Own Special Projects and Cross-Functional Programs: Lead high-priority, cross-functional projects on behalf of the SVP. These initiatives typically fall outside day-to-day operations and require dedicated oversight to launch, govern, and transition to a long-term owner.
Connect the Organization and Reduce Friction: Build strong relationships across P&T plus adjacent functions such as Finance and Security. Identify cross-functional friction points and partner with leaders to create clear engagement models, decision-making frameworks, and communication channels.
Foster Team Culture: Partner with HR and the leadership team to develop and execute programs that build a strong, inclusive, and high-performance engineering culture in IPE. Reinforce operating principles around reliability, ownership, financial stewardship of cloud resources, and collaboration aligned with Workday’s values.