Director, DevOps

HirexHire•Denver, CO

4d•Hybrid

About The Position

Director, DevOps, you will lead the strategic direction, execution, and continuous evolution of a global DevOps function. This is a hands-on leadership role responsible for building and operating secure, scalable, and highly automated cloud platforms that power critical SaaS products. You will lead geographically distributed DevOps teams while partnering closely with Engineering, Product, Security, Cloud Operations, and Architecture to ensure high availability, reliability, performance, and delivery velocity. This role also champions the responsible adoption of AI-assisted development and operations tools to improve engineering productivity without compromising security, compliance, or reliability. This role is hybrid to the Denver, CO area.

Requirements

10+ years of experience in software engineering, DevOps, platform engineering, or infrastructure roles
Strong hands-on background as a software developer prior to moving into DevOps or platform leadership
5+ years of experience leading large, global, distributed teams (50+ preferred)
Deep expertise in cloud platforms (AWS and Azure required)
Proven experience operating Kubernetes at production scale
Strong experience with CI/CD platforms (e.g., Azure DevOps), infrastructure-as-code (Terraform, ARM, etc.), and container ecosystems
Track record of operating large-scale, mission-critical SaaS platforms
Experience establishing and managing operational, uptime, and financial metrics
Demonstrated experience managing OpEx budgets and driving cost optimization

Nice To Haves

Experience in high-growth SaaS or enterprise software environments
Strong understanding of SRE principles and reliability engineering
Experience in regulated or security-conscious environments
Familiarity with on-prem and hybrid infrastructure models
Experience establishing best practices for safe, secure, and effective enterprise AI adoption

Responsibilities

Define and execute the global DevOps strategy aligned with business, product, engineering, and security objectives
Set a clear vision and transparent roadmap for cloud infrastructure, CI/CD, Kubernetes platforms, observability, and developer productivity
Drive platform modernization through automation, standardization, cloud-native best practices, and AI-enabled workflows
Balance executive-level leadership with hands-on technical contribution and informed decision-making
Actively contribute to architecture design, tooling selection, and complex technical problem-solving
Lead by example through direct involvement in infrastructure, CI/CD pipelines, Kubernetes platforms, and automation
Leverage AI-assisted engineering tools (e.g., GitHub Copilot, Cursor, Claude, Devin, or similar) to accelerate development, troubleshooting, and delivery
Review designs, code, and infrastructure changes to ensure quality, security, scalability, and operability
Serve as an escalation point for complex production and platform issues
Lead, mentor, and scale a globally distributed DevOps organization, including managers and senior engineers
Build a high-performance, inclusive culture across regions and time zones
Define clear roles, career paths, and performance expectations
Align teams around shared goals, empowering employees to deliver measurable outcomes
Utilize third-party partners and vendors as needed to achieve operational objectives
Partner closely with SRE to ensure platform uptime, stability, and effective incident management
Support incident response, post-incident reviews, and long-term reliability improvements
Drive capacity planning, resilience engineering, disaster recovery, and infrastructure cost optimization
Establish and enforce operational standards, runbooks, and documentation
Own and evolve CI/CD pipelines, deployment strategies, and infrastructure-as-code practices
Lead Kubernetes platform strategy and operations at scale
Drive automation across provisioning, testing, deployment, recovery, and operational workflows
Ensure secure, compliant, auditable infrastructure across all environments (cloud and on-prem where applicable)
Act as a trusted partner to Engineering, Product, Architecture, Security, and Cloud Operations leadership
Translate business and product needs into scalable, reliable platform capabilities
Influence architectural decisions to ensure operability, performance, and cost efficiency
Clearly communicate risks, tradeoffs, metrics, and performance trends to executive stakeholders
Define and track KPIs for uptime, deployment velocity, reliability, cost efficiency, and platform health
Build dashboards and analytics to monitor production performance and operational outcomes
Drive continuous improvement using data-driven insights
Evaluate, select, and adopt new tools, vendors, and AI-driven capabilities where appropriate