Senior Director, Cloud Engineering

FIRSTLIGHT•Brunswick, ME

About The Position

The Director of Cloud Services is a senior leader responsible for setting strategic direction and driving operational excellence across the organization’s on-premises cloud infrastructure portfolio. This individual brings visionary thinking paired with technical depth—architecting scalable cloud systems, championing innovation, and building high-performing teams that deliver measurable business outcomes. The role demands a decisive leader who can align cloud strategy with enterprise goals, cultivate a culture of accountability and continuous improvement, and serve as a trusted advisor to peers, stakeholders, and executive leadership.

Requirements

7–10 years of progressive experience designing, implementing, and managing large-scale virtual server environments, with deep hands-on expertise across VMware (vSphere, vSAN, NSX-T, vRealize Suite), KVM (CloudStack), Hyper-V, and Linux-based systems (RHEL/Ubuntu/Debian).
Experience with disaster recovery solutions (Zerto) and backup platforms (Veeam/Acronis); familiarity with cloud automation and orchestration frameworks.
Minimum 5 years in a senior leadership or management capacity, with a demonstrated track record of building and scaling high-performing technical teams in fast-paced, customer-facing environments.
Proven executive presence and communication skills, able to translate complex technical concepts for executive audiences and discuss strategic decisions with data-driven recommendations.
Strong command of security, networking, and storage principles within cloud environments, including software-defined data center (SDDC) architectures.
Demonstrated ability to develop and hire highly technical engineering staff.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or a related field preferred; equivalent experience with relevant certifications (VCP, RHCE, MCSE) accepted.

Responsibilities

Define and own the enterprise on-premises cloud strategy—encompassing VMware, KVM, and Hyper-V platforms—aligning infrastructure direction with long-term business objectives and market opportunities.
Implement a forward-looking technology roadmap that integrates modern cloud automation, software-defined data center principles, and emerging industry innovations.
Serve as a strategic advisor and technical authority for engineering staff, product development, sales engineering and cross-functional stakeholders on cloud infrastructure decisions, investments, and risk posture.
Drive continuous improvement across service delivery, operational efficiency, and cost optimization while ensuring cloud investments yield measurable ROI.
Recruit, develop, and retain exceptional talent—building a diverse team of cloud engineers, network engineers, and engineering managers capable of executing at scale.
Define clear roles, performance expectations, and career ladders that enable team members to grow into broader leadership responsibilities.
Implement structured onboarding, knowledge-sharing programs, and succession planning to build organizational resilience and depth.
Serve as an active coach and mentor to managers and senior engineers—investing in their technical mastery, leadership skills, and professional trajectories.
Lead by example—demonstrating the technical credibility, executive presence, and leadership behaviors that set the standard for the organization.
Oversee the design, deployment, maintenance, and optimization of on-premises cloud infrastructure including VMware, KVM, and Microsoft Hyper-V.
Ensure platform uptime, performance, and security across all cloud services while driving a proactive operational posture that anticipates and mitigates risk.
Direct engineering efforts around automation, orchestration, and tooling that reduce toil and improve deployment velocity and reliability.
Maintain technical authority across Windows Server, Linux (RHEL/Ubuntu/Debian), networking (switches, routers, firewalls), and disaster recovery solutions (Zerto, Veeam/Acronis) for the cloud.
Collaborate with product development to ensure cloud service offerings are well-defined, competitive, and delivered within designated timelines.
Manage the full lifecycle of vendor relationships, from evaluation and selection through contract negotiation, performance governance, and renewal, ensuring alignment with organizational requirements and commercial objectives.
Define and enforce vendor SLAs and escalation protocols, that protect service continuity.
Evaluate the vendor landscape to identify consolidation opportunities, emerging technologies, and partnerships that reduce cost and increase capability.