Head of Business-Critical Services

Platform9 Systems•San Jose, CA

3d•Remote

About The Position

Platform9 customers are operating business critical private cloud infrastructure that powers their most important workloads. The Head of Business-Critical Services at Platform9 designs, builds, and scales the roles, services, and deliverables that ensure our customers are successful in those endeavors, today and in the future.

Requirements

Excellent written and verbal communication skills, including the ability to explain complex technical issues to both technical and non-technical audiences.
Strong interpersonal skills and customer service mindset; ability to build trust with customer stakeholders and collaborate effectively across internal teams.
Account management and project/program management experience—comfortable driving action plans, timelines, and executive-ready status updates.
Strong aptitude for learning new technologies and applying them in customer-facing environments.
Creative, structured approach to problem solving; strong troubleshooting instincts and escalation leadership.
Demonstrated ability to hire, develop, and lead high-performing technical teams in a customer success or services capacity.
Broad familiarity across the following areas is expected; in-depth knowledge in three or more is essential: Linux systems administration (Ubuntu/RHEL), including troubleshooting systemd, networking, storage, performance, and logs. Kubernetes and cloud-native operations (clusters, CNI/CSI concepts, core components, upgrades, RBAC, troubleshooting workloads). OpenStack and/or private cloud infrastructure (compute, networking, storage concepts; HA/availability patterns; operational troubleshooting). Virtualization technologies (KVM/QEMU/libvirt; familiarity with VMware environments and migration considerations is a plus). Networking (TCP/IP, routing/switching fundamentals, VLANs, MTU/jumbo frames, LACP/bonding, DNS/DHCP; familiarity with overlays like VXLAN/EVPN is a plus). Storage/infrastructure integrations (Ceph concepts, iSCSI/NFS fundamentals, CSI drivers, storage performance and latency troubleshooting). Automation / Infrastructure as Code (Terraform/Ansible, Git-based workflows, scripting with Bash/Python). Observability and troubleshooting (metrics/logs/traces basics; Prometheus/Grafana/ELK-style stacks familiarity; packet capture basics).
Ability to follow and enforce standard engineering principles and practices (change management, incident handling, postmortems, documentation).
Travel to customer domestic sites and other global sites as necessary.
24x7 availability for after-hours escalation support for critical customer issues.
Minimum of 12 years of relevant experience required, including at least 3 years in a leadership role managing technical services, support, or customer success teams.
Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field (or equivalent practical experience).

Nice To Haves

Prior experience as a Technical Account Manager, Support/Services Director, Escalations Manager, SRE/DevOps leader, or comparable role is preferred.
Industry certifications are a plus, such as: CKA/CKAD, RHCE, CCNA/CCNP, OpenStack-related certifications, cloud provider certifications (AWS/Azure/GCP), or comparable credentials.

Responsibilities

Design and build the Business-Critical Service offering at Platform9, including: Technical Account Management Designated Support Engineer
Design standardized, branded Platform9 Business Critical Services deliverables, including: Investigation Status Reports Probable Cause Analyses Environmental Health Checks Periodic Business Reports
Work closely with Platform9 Professional Services and Solutions Architects to develop tools that differentiate the capabilities of Platform9 Business Critical Services.
Work closely with Platform9 Customer Success Engineering and Site Reliability Engineering to integrate the workflows between the groups to most effectively service Platform9 Business Critical customers.
Establish and report on metrics and KPIs that reflect the effectiveness of Platform9 Business Critical Services.
Establish and report on a customer satisfaction evaluation methodology for Platform9 Business Critical Services.
Set and model the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, authenticity, and service for the Business-Critical Services organization.
Design competitive pricing strategies for Platform9 Business Critical Services.
Collaborate cross-functionally with all roles and levels, especially senior leadership, to drive organizational growth, performance, and value realization for Business-Critical Services.
Continuously and relentlessly drive positive behaviors, mindshare, product adoption, and outcomes.
Evaluate, measure, and iterate Business-Critical Service deliverables for continuous convergence with customer expectations.
Working closely and collaboratively with customer stakeholders and internal cross-functional teams (Support, Engineering, Product, Sales, and Services), the Head of Business-Critical Services will ensure the organization becomes deeply familiar with each customer’s business goals, technical requirements, architecture, operational practices, and support history. The role requires proactively identifying risks, coordinating escalations, guiding best practices, and helping customers plan upgrades and expansions—while also ensuring Platform9 receives structured feedback to improve the product and customer experience.