Director of DevOps - Baltimore City Office of Information & Technology

Baltimore City•City of Syracuse, NY

13d•$126,246 - $208,130

About The Position

The Director of DevOps reports to the Director of Applications and leads the strategy, implementation, and operation of Baltimore City's application delivery and hosting platforms. The role is accountable for the reliability, security, and scalability of development and hosting environments that support critical City services. The Director provides technical leadership, operational oversight, and team management for DevOps engineers and related technical staff, ensuring applications built by City teams and partner agencies are deployed, maintained, and operated using modern DevOps practices across on-premises infrastructure and Microsoft Azure cloud environments. The position works closely with software developers, architects, cybersecurity teams, and agency leadership to deliver resilient and secure digital services. It combines technical expertise, operational leadership, and stakeholder engagement, and requires translating technical concepts for executive leadership while engaging directly with engineering teams and operational staff.

Requirements

Bachelor's degree in computer science, Information Systems, Engineering, or a related field; equivalent professional experience may be considered in lieu of formal education.
Ten or more years of experience in application development and maintenance, IT infrastructure, DevOps, cloud engineering, and related technical roles.
Four or more years of experience in technical leadership or team management.
Experience managing enterprise-scale application hosting environments.

Nice To Haves

Experience administering or leading the use of Azure DevOps Server and Azure DevOps Services, including repositories, pipelines, permissions, and deployment controls.

Responsibilities

Lead the City's DevOps engineering and platform operations teams, setting priorities and accountability for reliable application delivery.
Oversee the administration and reliability of application hosting environments across on-premises data centers and Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure, including Microsoft IIS and Azure-based services.
Set direction for CI/CD, automation, and infrastructure-as-code standards and hold teams accountable for their adoption and maturity.
Develop and maintain a multi-year DevOps and hosting platform roadmap aligned with BCIT and City modernization goals.
Develop and manage the DevOps budget, including tooling, licensing, cloud consumption, and cost optimization.
Manage vendor, contractor, and licensing relationships, including scope, performance, and renewals.
Lead workforce planning, hiring, and skills development for the DevOps function.
Ensure disaster recovery and business continuity plans are in place and regularly tested for hosted applications.
Evaluate and introduce automation and AI-assisted tooling to improve delivery speed and reliability.
Own the strategy, lifecycle, and capacity planning for platforms hosting City applications, including Windows Server environments, web hosting platforms, Azure App Services and cloud-hosted infrastructure, and DevOps automation platforms and pipelines.
Ensure DevOps platforms are secure, resilient, and scalable to support City agency systems.
Define service-level objectives and operational metrics, including availability, performance, deployment frequency, change failure rate, and time to restore, and report on them to BCIT leadership.
Own the DevOps toolchain roadmap and standards for source control and repository management, CI/CD platforms, artifact management, and infrastructure automation.
Implement automation and platform improvements that accelerate delivery of new software solutions.
Ensure DevOps infrastructure and deployment pipelines adhere to Information Security standards and best practices.
Maintain configuration management, security controls, and operational guardrails across hosting platforms.
Partner with Information Security teams to ensure compliance with security policies and vulnerability management processes.
Establish and maintain standards for source control, code review, CI/CD pipelines, deployment approvals, and release management across application teams, and monitor adherence.
Own the change management process for application and platform releases, including change requests, risk and impact assessment, Change Management participation, emergency change procedures, and post-implementation review.
Work with application development teams to provide the tools, environments, and guidance needed to deliver solutions.
Coordinate with application development teams on supported technology stacks and deployment requirements.
Provide architectural guidance on deployment strategies, environment design, and operational readiness.
Establish DevOps practices across the software development lifecycle, including source control, code review, automated testing, release planning, deployment, and operational handoff.
Interface with agency leadership, subject matter experts, and executive stakeholders across Baltimore City government.
Translate operational and infrastructure concepts into clear business terms for leadership audiences.
Lead DevOps delivery for cross-agency initiatives in coordination with application, infrastructure, and security leaders.
Direct and develop the Deputy Director of DevOps and, through them, DevOps engineers and platform staff.
Build and mentor the DevOps team, and clarify roles and decision rights across DevOps and application teams.
Promote a culture of automation, reliability, security, and continuous improvement.
Set operational priorities and direct incident response and platform improvement initiatives.
Participate in after-hours escalation for critical incidents and planned maintenance as needed.